


PGSM: The Second Story

by anamatics



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Live Action TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Universe Fusion, F/F, F/M, Gen, PGSM's Second Season: No Chibi-Usa Edition, Sailor Moon Manga, Sailor Moon S
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-16 15:47:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14814275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamatics/pseuds/anamatics
Summary: Fully edited and rewritten, migrating from FF.NetThe silence is approaching, but the inner senshi are powerless to stop it. Old allies appear, but at they friend or foe? Everyone wears a mask. Can they work together with the seemingly neutral outer senshi? Or will all their efforts for collaboration be for naught?





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes, when I'm really deep in my Sailor Moon feelings, I think about this fanfic and how I feel awful that I never finished it. This fic was born out of the need for there to be *something* after PGSM's special act, with Minako getting the sword and Rei being completely sidelined. There had to be a bridge to Crystal Tokyo, because weirdly, PGSM is the only universe where I can see Crystal Tokyo as a viable enterprise, because it's the only version of the story that felt _real_ to me as a writer and creative. This isn't an attempt at that, but rather an attempt at bringing in the rest of the relevant players, and doing an arc from the anime that always felt too light, and an arc from the manga that always felt too dark. I've taken some liberties with Haruka and Michiru, and have aged everyone up and out of school, which changes the game somewhat as well. This fic is fully revised and edited from the terrible run-on sentences and weird dropped plotlines that I created when I first wrote it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed the editing and revising process, not to mention the finishing elements.

_Two Years Following the Special Act_

_Six Years Following the Dark Kingdom's Defeat_

 

And, after all of that, she slept. The creature born out of the darkness which engulfed an empire, whose rage was stirred to life once more through pain and loss and ever-present want of power, fell silent. It was trapped, like so many things were once, within the soul of another – a human girl. Someday, this force would awaken once again. Someday soon the world would need this terrible force to rid itself of a rotting disease already lurking deep within the jungles at the center of the planet. But that time was not now, and the Princess of the Moon and heir to the Silver Millennium slept on.

Trapped within the body and consciousness of a girl from Tokyo just stepping past the cusp into adulthood, the awareness of the princess seemed to fade entirely out of memory and time. That was by design. That was how the guardian wanted it; those were her instructions. Wait until the threat grew near, wait until the time was right, and then move, quick as a flash, to nip it before the princess awakened to the threat of her beloved’s home planet once more. Only Tsukino Usagi was to be left behind. That was by design.

Their battles had, after all, ended long ago. The princess and her guard were all but memories now. The fight won, their lives and dreams were theirs to follow. The guardian was happy for them, for it was with the time they were given that they flourished, finally able to let go of the old ways and protective mannerisms. She watched them start to forget, one by one, until only their leader, the one who remembered everything still recalled the old fight. They forgot, as time so often forces memory to do, that they were the senshi that had guarded the Princess of the Moon; that they lived and died by her whim, and that protecting her was paramount in their slumbering purpose. It was better that way, the guardian thought, because the memory of dying – and of failure - had a nasty habit of lingering like a stale guest who’d long overstayed their welcome.

The guardian stood at her gate watching, waiting. The growing cloud on the timeline, where the future was obscured – and choices – some her own – masked the easy path forward she once saw. A clock ticked down the minutes left of the Pax Serenitatis, slowly, surely. Soon there would be no time left, and her window, once so narrow and focused only on an island nation in East Asia, would have to grow wider. This too was ordained. These lies, too, were already written. They were servants to their queen: they would serve her without hesitation. They knew on some level that it was only a matter of time before they were once again called to pick up arms and stand once more at the front lines. Their princess was a peaceful person, it was up to them, her guardians, to provide her with the sort of protection that she needed in order to create the world they all dreamed of.

The clock struck twelve and the guardian turned her attention southward. It was time for a fateful meeting.

x

_Part One - Awakening_

_Kyoto, Summer, Four Years Ago_

The bookstore's air conditioner was a welcome reprieve from the wet heat of the day. It clung to her skin like a smothering blanket, making her movement sluggish and the very act of breathing a challenge. Pregnant clouds rolled overhead, heavy with rain that would not come, and the temperature skyrocketed along with the pitch of the cicadas, the only sound in the still dead heat of the summer. She was used to humidity, but not the heat. It never got that hot in England, and when it did, the heat tended to be a dryer one swept in north from France. This heat was different, it made her violin swell with her feet and go out of tune after every practice session. She didn’t like it, and hiding in a bookstore when she barely read kanji above a seventh grade level made perfect sense.

The rickety window unit whirred in the corner as she nodded politely to the girl behind the counter. At least she could speak the language fluently, it was just the reading that troubled her. She supposed she could have studied it at university, but there simply was no time. She was preforming nearly weekly then, and the times had only gotten more frequent once she’d graduated. Her father grumbled about her coming to Japan, about how she’d struggle with the language, but it was just a parental form of worrying that she was used to. She was his only child, and she was an adult now, returning to the country he’d refused to step foot in for over two decades now.

“Are you going to see your grandmother?” he asked her when she told him she was doing a two-week performance tour.

“Would she know who I was, dad?” she answered. There wasn’t any hurt there. She couldn’t mourn a relationship that didn’t exist. “If I saw her?”

He shook his head. “She doesn’t approve of your mother.” He sighed and set his copy of The Sun down on the table. She hated that he read the tabloids. “Or the university. Or anything I do.”

“Dad, you’ve published papers in three languages in at least twenty journals. You’re one of the most highly respected cultural scholars in this country. What on earth could be so bad about you not teaching in Japan?”

He hadn’t had an answer for her then. Just a sad look in his eye that betrayed the deepest sort of family secrets. It wasn’t math. It wasn’t science. He studied culture and conformity: things Britain and Japan had in spades. Yet it wasn’t good enough. And now his daughter was going back to Japan.

“Bugger…” Her voice, though low, cut through the relative silence of the bookstore. The clerk behind the counter tilted her head to one side and gestured to a small placard by a rickety set of stairs. English Books Upstairs, it read. This was, after all, a tourist-heavy area. “Thank you,” she said. “But I speak Japanese.”

“Many apologizes,” the clerk answered. “Feel free to ask if you need help finding anything.”

She nodded and tucked her umbrella into her purse.  She actually wanted to look at art books, preferably in a section with a chair where she could rest for the precious few minutes that she had herself today.  “Art?” she asked.

“Upstairs.”

It seemed she would have to go up to the English books after all. She headed up the rickety flight of stairs. Her hope, her desperate hope, was that she would not run into anyone who knew who she was if she stayed away from the music section, which was toward the front of the ground floor of the shop.  That was the last thing that she wanted today, for she'd already dealt with enough of them over the course of the past few hours.

She reached the top of the stairs and paused to catch her breath. The stairs were steeper than she’d originally assessed.  This building was old, modeled in the traditional style- the stairs were steep and the ceiling was low on this floor. She frowned, annoyed that she felt winded after just a few stairs, and gathered up as much of her curly hair as she could from the nape of her neck. The breeze from the second floor’s aircon unit hit the sweaty skin she’d exposed and she almost shivered at the sudden change of temperature. The coolness of the room dried the sweat there in a matter of seconds and she exhaled happily as a wave of coolness swept over her. She twisted her hair up into a messy bun and stepped forward.

There was almost no one on this floor. The anonymity was a welcome reprieve. She was used to London, used to the way she could slip through crowds without fear of anyone knowing who she was. Her face was on posters here, in store front windows. Her concert series – while only a few – was just long enough for her to have attracted attention. Being alone in a city where she knew no one had become hard. Almost a rarity. Now she felt the siren’s song of the empty space. She headed toward the long rows of low bookshelves, housing everything from antique car manuals to a rather impressive collection of art books. There was a university nearby, she reasoned, it did make sense that there would be a large, and upon closer inspection, rather eclectic collection of art theory and actual monographs.

She found a book that was too her liking, a little out of place and wedged rather tightly between a book on photography and another one of those old car manuals - this one on the inner workings of a Ford-model transmission from the seventies. She sighed and wiggled the book out from between the others that were holding it in place. It wouldn’t budge. She grunted, rising onto her tiptoes, and muttering, annoyed.

“Do you need a hand?” A low, somewhat amused-sounding, voice asked in accented Japanese from directly behind her.

She jumped and spun around, her skirt swirling around her knees and her eyes flashing something dangerous. She should have known better - she should have expected it here, too. It was too much to hope for an escape. She was famous enough now it seemed. Bugger and blast. “I'll manage, thank you,” she said curtly.

“Say…I know your face.”

“You don’t. I assure you.” She was being rude, but she wanted to be left alone. She tried not to frown at the figure before her, masked as their face was behind sunglasses. “Now, if you don’t mind.” 

She turned back around and pulled the book out with no problem. Not bothering to look over her shoulder, she retreated into the furthest corners of the room from that person, and found herself a space on a cluttered windowsill to lean against, cracking the book open slowly. It was then she risked the glance. She didn't know why she did it, perhaps she was just too on edge from being around so many pushy people all morning, perhaps she just wanted a better look. The woman – and she was a woman, even though it took a moment of looking to see that – was tall, with sandy blonde hair frizzing from the humid air outside.  She wore a v-necked t-shirt and blue jeans cuffed at mid-calf with boat shoes. It was an androgynous, if very American look.

Her eyes met the woman’s as she pulled her sunglasses from her face and bent to examine some low shelf. The woman smirked.

It was then, maybe, that the moment happened. The moment when Michiru Kaiou first felt the strange, almost visceral pull, toward another human for the first time in her twenty-two years. It crashed over her, like the curl of surf: a wave pulled back out to sea by the undertow of a current so long-established it faded from the very essence of time and memory. Michiru’s breath caught, and she hurriedly looked back down at her book. The kanji swam, unintelligible pictographs before her eyes, and her heart raced.

 _What_ was _that?_

Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Michiru risked a glance above the top of her book. They were alone now. And she was being stared at.

Maybe this was what the songs meant, when they talked about seeing someone for the first time. Maybe it was just a pitch of visceral lust like she’d never felt before in her life. She’d had her nights out at uni, messed around with girls in bar toilets and in halls. But this – this felt different – more intense. So intense it scared her.

So she did what any self-respecting British woman would do when faced with such a situation: she pushed down the strong desire for a cup of tea and closed her book with a snap. Smiling, small, and perhaps just a little flirty, her face partly hidden her hair, Michiru asked: “Did you want something?”

“Do you usually mutter to yourself in English or is that just for my benefit?” The woman stepped forward, a smirk at her lips. As she drew level, Michiru took in her clear gray eyes and high cheekbones and swallowed. She wasn’t Japanese, that much was for sure.

“I ah—” She swallowed. She hadn’t been aware she’d been muttering at all. “Sorry. I think you must be mistaken… I don’t often talk to myself.” She smiled sweetly, but her ears and cheeks were burning. “Though I am a native English speaker.”

“Really? Me too!” The look of utter joy and relief that washed across the woman’s face was palpable. She ran a hand over her face, almost crumpling into herself with a dramatic flair that Muchiru wasn’t expecting. She looked through her fingers, up at Michiru. When she continued, it was in clear, unaccented American English. “ _God_ , you have no idea how hard it is to find someone who speaks English here. Even if it’s only muttering that certainly wasn’t coming from you.”  She laughed then, and it cut through the room like one of the graceful arias that Michiru had practiced earlier had filled the room with a sweet beautiful note. Michiru didn't think that she'd ever heard anything so beautiful, and the woman took her sudden flush and relaxing posture as a sign to come even further into her personal space.

“You’re American.”

“You’re… lemme guess, Singapore? Hong Kong?”

Michiru gave a small snort of derision. “London. Hardly as exotic.”

“Well, you’re here, aren’t you?” The woman answered. “Your Japanese is pretty good. Better than mine at any rate.”

“My father is from here.”

“Ah. My Baabaa was a war bride.”  She tilted her head to one side. “You bite your tongue when you read, it is really quite adorable.”

She knew that she bit her tongue. Her father had been lecturing her about it for years. She supposed there were worse vices. She put a hand to her mouth to cover the small smile that was forming there. She was flustered, unused to such friendliness. Americans were like this though, and it was nice to just have a conversation with someone without them knowing who she was for a change.  “Why are you in Japan, then?”

The tall woman leaned back, her hands clasped behind her head as she stretched. There seemed to be something of a challenge flickering across her face before she retorted, “Got a race.”

“A race?”

She tapped her thigh. “Yup. Just me, a bike, and a stupid amount of road. Usually I’d be doing some European trials right now, but my trainer wanted me to try the one here to ‘get back to my roots’ but really I think it’s because of a sponsorship deal he’s worked out with NHK.”

“I came here for work too.” Michiru said after a moment of processing. A part of her wanted to get away from this conversation, but the other part urged her to linger, to let this lie, to figure out if this was something worth even indulging. Or if this feeling that had taken her so suddenly, this sick, anxious feeling that filled her with want and desire and something else entirely all at once, was something that she should run from. 

“What do you do?”

“Play violin.”

The woman stared at her for a moment, before the recognition dawned across her face.  She grinned. “That’s where I’ve seen your face before. You’ve got a poster up at the music store by my hotel.”

“Guilty.”

“I’m Haruka, by the way. Haruka Tenou.” She was laughing when she said it.

“Michiru Kaiou.” Michiru answered, and took Haruka’s hand when it was offered.

“So.” Haruka had a firm handshake. “We’re two foreigners in a country where we both have roots – yet… neither of us seem to want to be here.”

Michiru felt bold. “Care to talk about it over something cool to drink?”

Haruka’s smile was slow and easy. “I think that I'd like that very much.”

x 

_London, Winter, Four Years Ago_

It started out fairly innocent. At least as far as friendships go. Haruka’s trainer had gotten a position training the British National Cycling team, and so Haruka, if Haruka wanted to continue training with him had to move from Oregon to London. Michiru had offered, as she liked Haruka anyway and they were both busy people, to find a flat to share together. It made both of their already challenging experiences with the London housing market a little easier.  Theirs was an easy companionship. They were two people who were crushed by the expectations of their daily lives and they knew, perhaps better than anyone else, what it meant to be truly alone.

And somehow, amidst the chaos that governed the universe: they’d found each other. Sometimes Michiru would marvel at that as they sat and watched terrible reality television together, or went for chips at two in the morning when they couldn’t sleep after a night out. Haruka was loud, American, and terribly clever for a girl who hadn’t spent a great deal of time at her studies. She’d biked all through university, and was holding down an income of sponsorships and training some of the young British up and comers. She wouldn’t take drugs, she explained to Michiru one time, and there was only so far she could go in the sport if she didn’t.

Still, she was competing, and she was winning.

They were twenty-two.

And, somewhere along the way in that shared East London flat, they fell in love.

Michiru reasoned that that, too, had started fairly innocently. It was easy to feel attraction to this tall, spunky woman who’d stumbled into her life quite by mistake. Haruka could make her laugh, Haruka could make her cry. Haruka was as mercurial as the wind itself, flitting from place to place, from topic to topic. She drew Michiru’s smiles from her like the sun warming the south of England after a week’s rain, laughing at the grimness of Londoners as they sat at the old man pub at the corner, steaming as their wet clothes dried off after a sudden downpour.  She could turn any day into an adventure, brilliant, beautiful.

Michiru was drawn in, lingering into the wee hours of the morning when their schedules did not align for weeks on end, desperate for the precious few minutes she could spend with Haruka before she collapsed into bed. She was drawn: like a moth to the flame to Haruka. And, it seemed, Haruka was equally drawn. She came to every one of Michiru’s concerts she could, she listened to every podcast, recorded every television appearance, and spent hours playing accompaniment on piano as Michiru practiced.

Her parents _loved_ Haruka when then went round for Sunday roasts or summer barbeques. It was in their back yard that Michiru first kissed her, her mother saw the whole thing and nodded approvingly, her father told her it was about time. They had something special, he said, and she was stupid if she was going to waste it because she was too afraid of what might come next. That was when Michiru knew. She could lose herself in Haruka. And it could be forever.  

She tried to resist the urges out of fear for both of their careers. They knew it wasn’t really safe to be out together – not like that at any rate – but they were both intensely private people. It didn’t matter if no one else really knew, if she could sleep curled protectively around Haruka most nights. She felt warm, safe, and comfortably knowing they had their own space to return to, and that their families didn’t really seem to care that they were together as they were.

And maybe, just for a little while in that growing winter, Michiru told herself she wasn’t in love with Haruka. The intensity of it felt too real after all, too raw and too terrifying. She was too young to have met the love of her life. There was that pull, that feeling of inevitability, when she lay in Haruka’s arms that Michiru could not shake. The connection between them made her both uneasy and happy. It felt too _easy_ when everything Michiru had ever learned about their kind of love said that it would be hard.

One night, not long after New Year’s, they sat together on the couch, curled into each other, warm and snug under a shared blanket. Haruka’s hand was tangled in her curls as she read something on her phone.  Michiru was buried in a novel when the question slipped out.

“Are we dating?”

Haruka’s hand kept moving, but she turned, eyes half-lidded, to meet Michiru’s gaze. “Is this when you tell me you’re not gay?”

“Oh, god no. I am.”

A small, almost relieved, sigh escaped Haruka’s lips. “I mean, I thought we were.”

“Me too,” Michiru answered. “I just wanted to clarify.”

“Ah.” Haruka grinned. “Does this mean I should ask you out on a date and stuff before I get to kiss you?” Her hand was firm on the back of Michiru’s head now, and Michiru laughed as Haruka pulled her in close to kiss her with the warmth and gentle ease of the all that they’d been doing before Michiru had felt the need to clarify.

“It feels inevitable, doesn’t it?” Michiru said when Haruka pulled away.

“Stupidly so.” Haruka agreed.

Michiru leaned into the kiss once more, into Haruka and into the singing joy in her heart.

x 

_London, Summer, Three Years Ago_

_In a moment, the half second that it took to blink her eyes, the world was gone._

_Blackness, dark, pressing, eternal night pressed in on her, sucking the life from her lungs. This was the beginning of something: the beginning of doom. She turned then, turned and looked – turned and looked and_ saw _._

_A city crumbled around her, falling to ruin as though it had been turned to dust. All the color had gone out of the world. It was red, and it was black. Bodies littered the ground, impaled on icy ribbons of death, curling as easily as the knife that cut them fell to the floor. The red was blood, coating her vision, filling her night with terror. There at her feet, Haruka lay still. Dead and lifeless, her head nearly cleaved from her body. Michiru couldn’t remember how it happened, but the press of that same silent blade against her own neck was ever-present in this place of silent, approaching doom. Michiru’s mouth opened in a scream, but no sound came out. She fell to her knees in Haruka’s pooling blood, her fingers slippery, sticky with it. She reached forward, trying to stop the wound, to close it so that it wouldn’t bleed anymore. The artery splattered into her face._

_“She will not survive this day.”_

_No words would come to Michiru. She looked up – a tall woman towered over her, hair moving in the swirling wind of destruction._

_“This is the beginning of the doom.” She gestured, her gloved hand showing the ruined, half-fallen London Eye, the shattered remains of Westminster. “You can stop this.”_

Michiru woke up screaming. Her heart thudded in her chest, her hands reaching out to the ruined body of Haruka on the ground. She had to stop the bleeding. Had to stop it. She could save her this time. She could—

_This time?_

“Hey…” A warm hand touched her shoulder. Michiru tensed, jerking away from the touch. The dry, wretched sound that escaped her lips was all the words she couldn’t make herself speak in the dream. She sobbed, hands shaking in her lap as Haruka respectfully kept her distance. Finally, when no more tears would come and Michiru had whipped her nose and drawn her arms around her knees to stare moodily at the wall opposite the bed, Haruka spoke again: “Do you want to talk about it?”

“It… was just so real.” Michiru confessed. “You were dead and I couldn’t stop the bleeding – I couldn’t…I couldn’t save you.”

“I’m right here.” Haruka’s touch now was firm, grounding.  She drew a tissue from the box by the bed and offered it to Michiru. “Dry your eyes. I don’t like seeing pretty girls cry. Dry your eyes and I’ll hold you, okay? There’s no need to be frightened. It was just a dream.”

Michiru blew her nose and nodded, but her hands were still shaking. It had felt so real, so terrifyingly real. She let Haruka coaxed her out of the bed and onto the char at her vanity.  She watched as Haruka stripped the bed and then numbly allowed Haruka to pull off her sleep shirt.  They were drenched in sweat. Haruka drew the mess of sheets into the kitchen and soon Michiru heard the gentle whirr of the washing machine spring to life.  She shivered as Haruka returned with the throw from the sofa in the other room and a fresh blanket that they scarcely ever used. “Come on,” she said. “It’s soft.”

Michiru retreated into Haruka’s arms that night, and let herself be lulled to sleep by the gentle slosh of the washer in the kitchen. At least this sleep was dreamless.

x

The fourth time the dream happened in a fortnight was when Haruka suggested that Michiru go see her doctor. Michiru was reluctant to go, but confessing to her parents that she hadn’t been sleeping resulted in similar concern. They wanted to make sure she was alright. So Michiru rearranged a radio appearance and went to the GP. The older man prescribed sleeping pills and more regular exercise, before he referred Michiru to a specialist. He didn’t think it was the onset of some sort of mental illness, but adults with night terrors were rare, he said. It should be checked out. “Could just be the summer heat and all those horror films they’re making these days.”

“Don’t really have time for films.” Michiru answered, taking the referral information and the prescription for a sleep aid. “I’m so busy.”

He winked at her. “Could also be the stress, dear. The mind is a mysterious place and sometimes its maladies manifest in odd ways. Go see the psychiatrist, see what she thinks.”

“Thanks,” Michiru answered. “I will.”

She had friends who’d been through similar things at university, when the manifestation of dormant mental illness emerged in sick slow mania, destroying everything in its path. She prayed that wasn’t her fate in life. She never… there were signs, she told herself. Signs that she’d never exhibited. She couldn’t be manifesting such things now.

Even with the drugs and the exercise, running herself ragged every spare moment she got and swimming for hours at the weekend, the dreams persisted. All Michiru could see when she closed her eyes was Haruka’s dead face and the ruin of London all around her. The silence was approaching. And with it would come the end of the world as they knew it. 

“Do you think its trauma?” Haruka asked one night after dinner.  She was doing the washing up while Michiru sat on a stool in the corner before the easel she’d propped up under the sunken kitchen light in the breakfast nook they didn’t use. Her eyes felt heavy with lack of sleep, but the colors spewed easily from her brush. She was painting what she saw, maybe hoping it’d manifest into some clearer picture of what it was meant to be. “I know they say that trauma from childhood can return at our age.”

“And do what?” Michiru asked, raising an eyebrow. “Make me see the end of the world?”

Haruka shrugged, “Dunno. Maybe?”

Michiru turned back to her painting. “I wish it was that easy.” The confession was a betrayal. There was a sense that Michiru got, in her moments of lucidity within the dreams, that this had all already happened before. That she was not seeing the present but rather a version of a past. She set the brush down and wiped some paint from the back of her hand. “Do you ever thinking about the possibility of past lives?”

“What like Buddhists?”

Shrugging, Michiru sat back and folded her arms over her chest. “I dunno…I get the feeling that I’ve seen what I see in my dreams before.”

Haruka dried her hands on the dishtowel they’d gotten at Kew in the autumn and came to have a look at the painting. Michiru didn’t know what she was expecting, trying to express what she saw in this way. Haruka would see it how she saw everything, with a quick, assessing glance and then later deliberation. But the way Haruka looked at the half-finished painting, with revulsion and horror clearly written all over her face as she took in the many sleepless hours Michiru had spent recreating the image from her dreams, was enough to make Michiru want to tear it up and never speak of the dreams again. It made her want to take the pills the psychiatrist prescribed, the ones that made her sleep for hours and never fully come awake. She was so scared of this future, so scared to lose everything she loved. She wanted Haruka to understand, but it was clear as day that she did not.

“Pretty girls shouldn’t paint such depressing things.” And with that, Haruka turned and pulled her jacket from the hook by the door. She stood in the doorway for a moment, staring at her feet, before she walked out of the flat.

Michiru didn’t call out for her. No, it was like the words were dead in her mouth, choking like the silence of her dreams. She picked up the paintbrush and went back to work.

That night, the dreams changed. What had once just been just images of a horrible death were replaced with visions of emotion – of happiness and sadness – of other deaths, but also birth and rebirth. That was the first night Michiru woke up not screaming, but with a name on her lips that died as soon as she tried to recall it. The monstrous woman in her dreams told her to remember, remember for all their sakes, yet as Michiru curled into a ball far away from Haruka on the bed, no memories would come. There was nothing to remember. No trauma. No past rape she’d repressed or terrible childhood accident. No, there was just happy memories aided by Michiru’s near-perfect recall. There was nothing to remember.  There was nothing.

Still, the emotions were overwhelming. Haruka was keeping her distance. Trying to be supportive but at a loss about what to do. It was affecting her too, Michiru could tell. She’d grown up with a mentally ill mother, she knew what the bad times did to one’s partner. So she tried. She tired to push the emotions of the dreams away, tried to hide them inside herself because she did not want to lose Haruka to this illness – this trauma she had no way of articulating. She took the pills she’d been prescribed and got a referral to a neurologist. Maybe there was a tumor or something equally horrible pressing on the fear center of her brain. Maybe there was some logical explanation as to why she felt as though she was going mad.

Out of sight. Out of mind.

x

The neurologist’s office was in Richmond, leaving Michiru with the arduous task of crossing the city by the Tube or shelling out the forty quid for a cab. She took the Tube, having a blissful free day between recordings. She was collaborating with a local rapper to provide some string accompaniment to one of those soaring rap party songs, and the takes of the same progression she’d done over the past three days repeated endlessly in her head.  He was a lot like her, his heritage mixed, and his identity wrapped up in both rejecting and accepting who he was. Michiru liked him. And the collaboration sounded good.

“Get some rest tomorrow, love,” he’d said when they’d said goodbye yesterday. “You look like you need the sleep.”

“It’s an elusive thing,” Michiru agreed.  “I’ve been writing.”

“Ah. Got that midnight mania then – that’s when all the best ideas come.”

“Too right.” She laughed. “Goodnight Kelé.”

The train was relatively empty, the morning rush slowed to only the few who worked odd hours to avoid peak travel times. Michiru was content to just sit and be rocked all the way to Richmond. Maybe she’d be able to doze. The train lurched forward and Michiru found herself spacing out. Not thinking about anything in particular, just about the repeated refrain of Kelé’s song. It pounded in time with the ache in her head from the strong black coffee she’d downed before getting onto the train. Haruka made it in the style of the Pacific Northwest, with honey and very little milk. The world swam, she losing her grip entirely, dozing as the train rocked. It only took the time to close her eyes for Michiru to be back there, the ruined city around her and the world slowly ending. She twisted, her very breath aching in her chest.

That girl, begging her to remember the past, her mission and promises that she was positive she'd never made.

“You'd do better to just listen to them,” a tall, dark-skinned woman commented from the seat across the subway car from her.

Michiru started. People _never_ spoke on the Tube. “What?” her voice was raspy. She had fallen asleep. 

From across the aisle of the abandoned train car, empty save them, the woman sat back. She was dressed in a well-tailored, and very on-trend work suit. Her skin was dark, as was her hair – but her eyes were the warm sort of yellow-brown that lit up a room and illuminated her face like a cat’s eyes would – almost glowing. She looked like any other young south Asian business woman Michiru knew, yet when she spoke, her accent was not something Michiru could place. It sounded vaguely European, and yet it was not…there was something familiar about it.

“It is better to simply listen to what your dreams are trying to tell you, Miss Kaiou, and try to remember the past.” She smiled then, and her painted lips reflected a danger that set Michiru’s teeth on edge.

“How do you know my name?” Michiru demanded. Her mind wasn’t moving fast enough because of the lack of sleep – but she was now worried – she was alone on the Tube with a woman who clearly knew more about her than she was letting on. Was she in danger? Should she try and call Haruka? Would she have service?

“I know quite a lot about you, Michiru,” came the answer. “You should take heed of my warning. The silence is fast approaching, and you have no way of stopping it if you do not _remember._ Not in your current state.”

“My…what?”

“ _Oxford Circus – Oxford Circus. Transfer here for Bakerloo and Victoria Lines. This is a Central Line train to Ealing Broadway._ ”

Michiru scrambled to her feet, but in the chaos of the small crush of people getting on and off the train at the busy shopping stop, the woman seemed to have vanished completely. Her skin crawled.

_What was that?_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to discuss dates a little bit. While the PGSM Special Act came out not long after the original series airing, the implied four year time jump puts the year that series took place ~2008, given that the series ran in 2003/4 and that the story probably spanned a full year. As such, this series starts in 2010, and continues to the present day, which would be 2014. Because of this I _am_ going to be updating the story a bit to include some references to technologies and world events (e.g. British and Japanese Elections, social media, digital music policies) that weren't around when I started writing the story, ironically, in 2008. If this doesn't feel authentically PGSM to you, forgive me. I wanted to carry on in the spirit of the show, which I though presented a digital native audience that was quite ahead of itself for the time. I am about two years older than Inner Senshi in PGSM's established timeframe, so I'm trying to write an authentic experience of the rapidly changing world around us.

_London, Autumn, Three Years Ago_

She put the encounter from her mind for _months._ There was no time. Her single with Kelé blew up and she’d had to make appearances at some of his British Tour. Following that success, more acts had approached her for collaboration. Michiru was grateful for the engagement, for the chance to play in front of new and diverse audiences. It kept her mind busy, focused on the present, rather than whatever was going on while she slept.  It felt… good, safe. Still, she pushed the thoughts away whenever they surfaced, refusing to acknowledge what happened during her sleeping hours. She took the pills she was prescribed every day and let the numb bliss of them take her into dreamless sleep each night. It was the first time, in quite some time, that she’d dreamed without thinking of death.

“You’re becoming kind of a big deal, Michiru,” Haruka said one morning in early September. She flipped over the newspaper and showed Michiru a small write up of her most recent collaboration with a folk duo out of Glasgow. “Ms. Kaiou has rocketed onto the scene as a well-trusted collaborator in the style of those who came before her: Vanessa Mae, Edvin Marton and David Garrett. Her ability to meld classical violin into anything from grime to traditional folk music has given her nearly universal regard within the industry. While still relatively unknown, we predict in a few years’ time, Ms. Kaiou will be a household name, and London is proud to claim her as one of our own.  Kinda makes a girl feel as though she’s dating a celebrity.” 

“And here I was thinking that was what _I_ was doing,” Michiru replied airily. The attention was getting to her. Her work with Kelé hadn’t been her first collaboration, but it had been the first where she’d received credit as a featured artist. Kelé insisted that she played as much of a role in making the song blow up as he, or the beats guy, did. “You’re no slouch yourself, Haruka.”

Haruka laughed. “Nah, I’m not anyone special.”

“I think the whole cycling world is racing for you to get out of U-25, Haruka. Didn’t that magazine article last week say that your debut on the women’s track in France next summer was one of the anticipated appearances in years? You’ve got to stop winning all those races.” Michiru giggled. “Give the children a chance.”

“What? And let some infant beat me? Not a chance.” Haruka set the paper aside and came to wrap her arms around Michiru’s waist. “Congratulations, though, that’s high praise from _The Guardian_ , I didn’t think their music critics liked anyone.”

Michiru leaned back into the embrace.  Haruka was warm and smelled like coffee. Her lips were warm and she draw Michiru’s humor from her effortlessly. That was what Michiru loved about her, loved how easy it was to laugh with her, how easy it was just _be_ around Haruka. It was hard sometimes, but the pills and the frenetic pace at which her life was moving these days actually helped make it seem less chaotic. “I suppose we should enjoy these moments on relative anonymity, huh?”

“Yeah,” Haruka agreed. “We’re like an anonymous celebrity lesbian power couple.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

Haruka kissed her cheek. “Nah, just honest.” She drew back. “I’m going to be back late tonight. There’s a two-a-day and the second practice doesn’t start until seven-thirty.”

“So… you’ll be home around half nine?”

“Maybe closer to ten.”

“Alright.” Michiru nodded. “I was thinking about getting take away tonight, but we can save it for when you’ve got more energy.”

“Thanks, I’ll probably just eat my weight in pasta when I get home.” Haruka rubbed the back of her neck a little sheepishly. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Michiru rose on her tiptoes to kiss Haruka’s cheek. “We’ve got busy lives. We know this.”

Haruka grinned at her and swept back toward the bedroom. “I’ll call you later, alright?”

“Sure.” Michiru waved. “I love you.”

It slipped out so easily that Michiru almost forgot how hard it was for her to say those words. To feel the pressure of _becoming_ something more with Haruka when it felt so easy. Everything she’d ever read, everything the old women at her mother’s bridge circle told her, everything said it would be hard. Love was never easy, they said. Gay love even more so. You had to suffer for it. You had to fight with your partner (and yes they did do that on occasion, and before Michiru’s medication had gotten sorted it had been quite bad, but that was just…done now, and it felt so reasonable and good and nice), so why did it come so naturally with Haruka? Why did everything with her feel like an inevitability, rather than merely happenstance?  Why was it so easy?”

Haruka’s head returned to the doorway and she smiled, slow and easy. “Love you too.”

And although it had been over a year at this point, Michiru’s heart still did that little flip-flop of joy it always did when Haruka said it.

x

For the first time in her life, Michiru felt as though she was moving _toward_ something, a successful and lucrative career, a future with Haruka. Her mind had steadied, or maybe she just didn’t remember the dreams anymore.  Her paintings brightened – scenes from far-off places: ball gowns and late night parties. They, too, came from that same far-off world of her dreams, only these were associated with those same warm, steady feelings she associated with Haruka, with her parents, and with the music she coaxed out of her violin.

Her mother told her she was having something of a renaissance in her painting, but outside of Haruka, her parents were the only ones who ever saw her paintings. Her father thought they were very nice but was concerned about her mental health all the same. He always noticed things, even when Michiru tried her best to hide them. They sat outside in the garden, enjoying the clear Sunday afternoon, alone for the time being. Michiru’s mother had gone in a few minutes before the answer the phone, and Haruka had gone back to Oregon for two weeks as it was her mother’s birthday and the annual family vacation. Michiru was meant to go on that trip, but the recording time that she’d had with her latest collaboration had had to be moved around at the last minute, and her manager was unwilling to pay for studio time in the States. Besides, Haruka’s family liked to camp far, far away from civilization and cell service, it was a risk to be so unreachable at such a crucial moment in her career.  Her manager was in talks with some mega pop stars, and it was only a matter of time until something went through. Haruka had, thankfully, understood.

“Why do you hide what you really want to paint?” Michiru’s father asked. He was drinking Peroni and sitting on the swing beneath the tree that dominated the entire back half of the garden.  Beyond it there was open farmland. “I’ve seen your work – you’re so much better when you can paint your darkness.” 

“I don’t want to paint that darkness,” Michiru answered. “Those dreams – they’ve stopped.”

“Yes,” Her father sipped his beer. “I suppose they have. But at what cost?” He stared out across the neighbor’s hard, divided by a low fence.  The dog was out, running back and forth, back and forth, not barking, just running.  “I look at you sometimes and I think you’re dead inside. I know the medicine helps you, but I look at you and all I can see are dead eyes – it’s like your joy has left you.”

“I’m happy…” Michiru tilted her head to one side. “The medicine helps. It isn’t like the one that made me a zombie.”

“I know it isn’t. But I know what that medicine does when it’s prescribed – I don’t what to say when it shouldn’t be prescribed, but when the side effects are really why it’s being prescribed in the first place. You’re not depressed. You don’t need a mood stabilizer, you’re taking it because of these… these dreams that have gotten into your head, changed you. I wonder… I wonder if you just let yourself paint what you see in those dreams, if it would help more.”

Michiru fiddled with the edges of her skirt. “Do you think I should, I dunno, embrace what I see, dad? The ruin of the world?”

He was quiet for a long time after that. From inside, her mother shouted that dinner would be ready soon. “Your grandmother…” He said at length. Michiru froze. He almost never spoke of his parents. “Your grandmother always believed that dreams were a way to telling us something that we weren’t ready to hear. They’re your unconscious brain processing what it can’t force itself to admit.” He got to his feet and put his hand on Michiru’s shoulder. “I may not talk to her anymore, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t wise about some things. If painting is what helps, you should allow yourself to paint your truth.”  He smiled. “I just want you to be happy.”

When he went inside, Michiru found herself alone with the early-evening birds and the gentle buzz of bees. She was alone, far more alone than she ever felt in London proper. She exhaled, thinking. Her mind filtered back, not to the dreams and their horrifying content: but to that moment on the Tube, just before she’d found the right medication to make the dreams stop – just before they’d shifted into something more palatable. That strange woman, with the dark eyes and intensity that scared Michiru, she’d told her to accept what the dreams were telling her.

“Christ…” Michiru muttered, rubbing at her head. It wouldn’t do to listen to strangers about her health. But the desperate urge _to_ listen to her, to listen to her father as well, gripped Michiru’s gut with desperate conviction. It held her here, in that moment that feels so liminal in our minds: the moment before we come to a decision, before the truth settles and we accept it and move toward it. She drew a shuddering breath. “I can’t stop taking them.”  She got to her feet, heading toward the house. “Paint your truth. Paint your truth.”

x

With Haruka away it was easy to let her mind wander when she wasn’t working. For the first time in months, Michiru allowed herself to think of the dreams. She lingered in the feelings there, pushing against them, spreading her consciousness out across the expanse of them and letting them sink into her mind – her body – the very core of her being. On the first night she was afraid, allowing her mind, even though the pain was muted and sleep came easily, to stay in that space. She stood in the destruction of London and stared at it, at Haruka dead on the ground, at the mangled remains of her parents. She stood there and she tried to understand.  Tried to see past the terror that hiccupped to the surface throat – already raw from screams.

“I see you’ve come back.” The shrouded figure was standing before her, the same as before, the same one who begged her to remember. “Are you brave enough to remember now?”

Michiru swallowed, fretting as to whether or not this was truly what she wanted. “What do you want of me?”

“Only what was written,” the figure answered. It raised its hands and pulled the hood back from its face.  The face it revealed was one familiar to Michiru, and yet one alien still. It resembled her own, resembled herself, and yet it was different. There was an otherworldly glow to this woman and her strange clothing – a crisp white uniform beneath the black shroud. Her hair was the color of the sky on a Lisa Frank trapper keeper – and the skirt she wore would put the Spice Girls at their shortest to shame. But it was the face that grabbed Michiru, the face that held her. The spattering of freckles across the nose she’d recognize anywhere. The eyes that could only ever be her own. Clear, blue, stark against her father’s skin tone, still deeply tan from the summer adventure she and Haruka had in Ibiza.

Michiru took a step back, stumbling over the yet another corpse. This of her best mate from uni, the one she’d lost touch with but still thought of fondly from time to time. She stumbled. And then she fell.

The figure – herself – stood over her and offered her a hand. “Do you wish to remember? Do you wish to see what the Silence will bring?”

Michiru held out her hand and clasped her own, allowing herself to be pulled forward into darkness.

_What she saw this time was not the end, no, it was the beginning. The slow corruption of the earth from the terrible sickness that lurked within the darkness of men’s hearts. All hearts where corrupted, and the blackness spread from each of them – hopping, almost like disease, almost like the plagues of old, from person to person. As it spread, the hatred grew. The people suffered, grabbing hold of what little they had and constantly, constantly wanting more.  The darkness was a hunger, and it was in every man’s heart. A hunger for power, for glory. They yearned for it, craved it, and would do anything to get it. And in their wake: silence._

_Yet there, in the darkness at the center of it all, was hope. Somewhere out there in the world, there were weapons which could fight this silent coming doom. Weapons which could capture the essence of those who were pure of heart. Together they could create a weapon which could combat the silence. A weapon fit for a warrior chosen to heal the world._

“Without the talisman hidden in three pure hearts, there is no way of stopping the silence. There is no way of healing the darkness in evil men’s hearts.”

Michiru looked up, and the vision of herself-that-wasn’t stared back at her with solemn eyes. “What do the talismans look like?”

The other’s face remained impassive. “It is not yet time for that. You are needed here to stop the threat before it can truly awaken.” She turned, gesturing to the ruins of London against the blood red sky. “All this is preventable, Michiru, if only you accept your fate.”

Her eyes narrowed. “And what is my fate?”

“To stop the silence. Or die trying.”

x 

_Neptune…_

It was half two when Michiru woke up to the gentle buzz of her phone from where it lay charging on her dresser across the room. She scowled and pushed herself up and out of bed. Haruka knew better than to call, even if she was confused about the time difference. And Michiru knew she wasn’t, as they’d talked while Michiru was on the train home from her parents.

Her phone glowed and Michiru stumbled, sleepy and uncomprehending. The night was warm yet. A late autumn windstorm, mixed with the humidity of the remnants of a hurricane had the flat humid with the windows open.  Michiru’s skin was sticky with sweat – from the nightmare – from the warning and the terror.

There was a text from a blocked number on her phone. It had an address – close by. Victoria Park. Her movements seemed automatic. She dressed quickly in tights and trainers, pulling on a heavy sweater along with her winter jacket and was out the door, keys and purse jangling in her pocket almost before she could think about what she was doing. The wind whipped her hair back until she caught it and twisted it into a messy bun.  And then she ran. Ran harder and faster than she’d ever run toward anything in her life.

Something was starting. Something was happening.

There was an air of finality about her movements as she slipped underneath the chained off park entrance.

 _Neptune_ …

It was the voice that awakened her, echoing in her mind. Again and again, it came, drawing her deeper into the park – deeper into the solitude of this windy, eerie night. Michiru’s muscles were tense, but her mind was resolute. There was no time for her to be frightened of what she might encounter, or what might be waiting for her in the bushes.  Each rustle of the trees overhead, or the tattle of an empty cup as it rolled, having been blown from the bin, down the walk.  She was _ready_. She had to be.

_Neptune…_

Michiru closed her eyes and stood stock-still, listening to the silence all around her. She focused, concentrating on the noises that were out of place – drifting, unbidden, though the fog of it all. Her coat swirled around her as the wind gusted through the lee between the two low rises that dominated this section of the park, and her hair wrestled itself free of the loose bun she’d pulled it into earlier. It whipped across her face now. Something was about to happen, something big.  It ached in Michiru’s bones.

She swallowed, wet her lips, and focused.

Was this what the dreams were talking about?  She didn't know what they'd wanted her to be ready for, but the feeling of dread that welled up in the pit of her stomach was nothing to trifle with. She should feel something, some instinct told her, unbidden as she took an unsteady step forward. She should feel something and she felt _nothing._ She opened her eyes and squinted owlishly in the dark. What should she be looking for? There was nothing here. Nothing here save the foxes and the rough sleepers at this hour.

_Perhaps I am going mad after all._

The sound of clapping cut though the silence like a gunshot.

She turned quickly, her fists clenched as she tried to figure out what exactly she was going to do should she actually have to defend herself if someone were to attack her. She carried no knife, and she had no real fighting skills. Haruka knew karate from her childhood, but that was years ago and she was in America, far, far away from this.

“I have to say, I did not expect you to take my advice to heart, Kaioh Michiru.” From the darkness beneath a tall oak, a figure stepped forward. The voice was feminine, and Michiru fists unclenched, just a little bit. The voice was _familiar._ The woman from the Tube, all those months ago. The tall, dark skinned woman who spoke to her now in a language that Michiru didn’t understand – and yet did.

The woman spoke another word, and light, blinding, pure and white, filled the clearing before them. Michiru’s breath caught, for now she was seeing the woman in plain daylight. She was tall, her features unreadable, and her hair was long and danced along her back. Yet there was something different about her. She wasn’t South Asian, as her features might make Michiru think at a glance. No, there was something timeless about her – something that made her seem as though wherever she hailed from, it was both long ago and far, far away. Sadness seemed to cling to her as she stepped forward, her hand outstretched. “You’ve done well to come this far. I did not think you would have the courage.”

“Why did you say my name like that?” Michiru asked. She did not take the proffered hand, but rather plunged her fists into her pockets.  “Did you call me here?”

The woman nodded.  “I did. It is time for your fight to begin.”  She paused then, her brow furrowing as she looked Michiru, and then their locale over. “Forgive me. I am unaccustomed to this time and its customs.” Her lips were painted blood red.

“Who are you?” Michiru demanded. This was too much.

“I am a ghost from your past,” the woman said, her expression unreadable. “And a reminder of your future.” A twig snapped in the distance and the woman spun. “Neither of which are relevant at the moment.”

Michiru followed her gaze. The rustling and cracking of twigs grew louder. From the darkness, a creature lurched forward into the circle of light where they stood.  It towered over both of them, wormlike and revolting. A centipede’s numerous legs skittered to each side, giving it a fluidity of movement that set Michiru’s skin crawling.  Hairs rose at the back of her neck as its mouth slashed down, mandibles, sharp as any knife, cut through the air before Michiru.

A hand, firm and strong, grabbed the back of her coat and threw her backwards. She tumbled to the ground with the strange woman, coughing at the creature’s stench. It smelled of the moldy decay of bodies upon bodies, mixed with the sweet scent of the cleaner used in public toilets. Refuse dripped form its form. This was darkness – the creature that lived within some man’s evil heart.

Michiru dug her heels into the dirt of the footpath and pushed herself backwards.  Her heart hammered in her chest.  She had to get _away_. She had to…

The creature lurched forward and Michiru raised her hands to protect herself, but it stopped, frozen as though petrified, yet it still drew rattling, horrifying breaths. It was like it was watching her, curious as to her move.

Bile rose in Michiru’s throat and she drew a shuddering breath, trying to keep herself from vomiting.  “What is this?”

The woman drew herself to her feet and said nothing. She stood there, watching the creature with an expression of disinterest.  “Will you fight?” she asked.

“Ho--” Michiru started to speak, only to have the creature lurch forward once again. This time Michiru threw herself to the left, landing hard on her knees and scarcely feeling the pain.  She rolled through an empty flower bed and pushed the smeared wet dirt from her face, crouching low, watching the creature as it watched her.  “How can I fight this thing?”

The woman had moved herself to one side of the small ball of light she’d created, out of the way of the creature and Michiru both. She looked unbothered by Michiru’s plight, at the fact that this creature should not be real, and that it was currently attempting to vivisect Michiru with its mouth.  Michiru’s trainer caught the mandible and she kicked hard, scrambling to her feet and sprinting toward the woman.  “What are you doing!?”  Michiru shouted, stumbling over loose sticks blown down by the storm.  “You can fight it! You can kill it!”

Overhead, the clouds shifted, and the full moon shown down around them.

The woman turned to her, and Michiru realized she had no idea why she thought this woman could fight. She just _knew_ that this woman was standing by, as she always did, watching the future play out.  It grated on her mind. This time, yes, this time, she would fight and die along with the rest of them.  It was their way and their duty in life.  It was time she faced the music.

The woman smiled and held out her hand to Michiru, a small, aqua-colored rod in her hand. “Take the power inside you and force it outwards, Neptune.” 

“Damnit, why wouldn’t you fight? You’ve always just _watched_. You have to --” She pushed away the woman’s hand and grabbed her by the collar. “You can’t stand by and watch the world end. Not again. I won’t let you…”

“This is not my fight,” The woman said calmly.  Her eyes were hard, angry, and defensive. While she spoke slowly, as though rehashing a rehearsed line, her tone had a sharp edge to it. She was warning Michiru off, pushing her back. “You are to stop the silence. You and your sleeping partner.”

“Why me?” Michiru demanded. Their faces were inches apart. The woman’s breath was a whisper on her face. Overhead the moon glowed, and the monster stood stock-still at the edge of the pool of moonlight that surrounded them. The monster would not come while the moon still shone - she somehow knew.  She was safe here.

“Because this is your battle, Neptune.”  The woman took Michiru's fingers in her hands, carefully untangling them from her shirt collar and pressing that aqua rod into her hands once more. “ _This_ is your destiny. Take it.”

Michiru looked down at it and almost threw it away in disgust. She could never throw it away, she would be able to escape this. The rod pulsed in her hand, and it felt calming, like the crash of waves against a cliff face.  It felt like coming home. Like how Haruka’s arms felt after a long day, or the way Haruka blushed when Michiru said something shocking. She stared down at the rod. “What did you call me?”

“Do you not remember yet?”  The ghost of a smile drifted across the woman’s face.

“No!” 

“Funny. You’ve been speaking to me as though you do.”

Michiru felt her irritation rise. “What do you want me to know?”

“If you do not remember, this will be much harder for you.”

Michiru looked down at the rod in her hand and the words came to mind unbidden.  She spoke them, and cast her future to the fates.

With an approving nod, the woman closed her eyes and raised her hand to the sky. She shouted something indecipherable in a language that Michiru did not understand and was encased in an eerie greenish black light.  The light fated in a matter of seconds and the woman was wearing a uniform similar to the version of herself Michiru saw in her dreams, only this one was a deep hunter green. A long staff materialized in her hand and she steadied herself for a moment before her eyes, red and ringed with black, flashed open once again. “My name is Sailor Pluto, the guardian of time and space.  Prepare yourself Michiru, this will be a long, hard fight.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took great care in the perspective of this story to focus on Michiru as a lens. We know Haruka's becoming a senshi from the anime and manga quite well - we know how Michiru perused her, and how Haruka rejected her. To me, that's interesting, because we do not know how much time Michiru was a senshi before then, or what her relationship with her parents was like. I tried to add that as color to this story - and I also tried to make Haruka's awakening as a senshi a little more believable and less of a celebration of Michiru's apparent omnipotence at the time. Hopefully I succeeded. 
> 
> As for the language thing: it's one of my (very strongly held) personal headcanons that the memories of the senshi are far more than just the mere flashes of the past life we are lead to believe. I'm driven to this by Minako's arc from PGSM, where it is so obvious she has clear, sharp and very intense memories of the past beyond what the rest of the senshi do. Language, to me, comes as an extension of that. I feel as though the outer's memories manifested as Minako's did - though for different reasons. It's part of why I made Haruka and Michiru not Japanese, why this part of the story is set in London. I wanted them to feel very _different_ to the inner senshi in both behaviour, appearance, and language.

_London, Winter, Two Years Ago_

The memories came in fits and starts. Michiru, after the conversation with Pluto, was expecting them. They slid into her mind like intrusive thoughts, curling at the corners and appearing when she least expected them: after showers and before sex, when she swam or danced in the kitchen, when she played her violin alone in the flat at midday. There was no pattern to them, just the continual drip, drip, drip of the unwanted and the forgotten. Now, it seemed, Michiru was haunted by both the monsters of the silence and the memories of who Sailor Neptune had once been.

She found herself in the throes of one, not long after coming home from rehearsal one afternoon, curled on the couch and mindlessly watching telly. Haruka was puttering around in the kitchen, talking to herself, making dinner for them. Michiru watched her, seeing Haruka, and yet not seeing her at all – seeing a memory of another time, another _life_ on a different planet. How people had managed to live so far from the Moon’s silver light, from the sun, was beyond the bounds of science. A fantasy with no plausible explanation – the sort of thing you read about in fairy tales. Yet people lived on that planet, in that wan darkness. People _thrived._

And in that moment, Michiru couldn’t help but think of Haruka living on that mountainous, plain-filled place Neptune recalled. Haruka would have been happy there, with the breezes playing at the grasses and the endless fields of blue-green crops growing under artificial, amplified light. She thought of what it would have been to not have been Neptune at all, but just to have lived at that time, among those people. Would the Moon have captivated her as it did now, would she stare up at it and wonder if the Americans who stepped on the moon hadn’t found the ruins of the Kingdom That Was?

“You’re clearly off in space,” Haruka commented. She set a bowl of something colorful and warm down on the coffee table before Michiru. “Burrito in a bowl, all the rage in the States. I made yours with less rice.”

Haruka had a race in two days and was on a strict diet. Michiru suspected that everything in this bowl was stuff Haruka was meant to be eating as a part of her pre-race regimen. It looked delicious, if her stomach hadn’t been sour to the thought of food by the strength of Neptune’s memory. “Sorry, I was,” she confessed. “Thinking about the first astronauts.”

“That’s all a conspiracy, you know, cooked up on a Hollywood soundstage.”

“Next you’ll tell me that Kennedy was killed by the CIA.” Michiru deadpanned.  Haruka loved conspiracy theories almost as much as she loved the X-Files. “Or the… er – Cigarette Smoking Man.”

The smile blossoming at Haruka’s lips was pure and genuine. Michiru’s heart fluttered at the slight of it. Despite everything she was starting to recall, this was what made her heart truly sing – Haruka, warm and sweet, leaning against her laughing about her favorite television show. “You know he did it.”

“I think if the show is any indication, the man’s ego is the size of this island.”  She tilted her head. “Ever heard of an unreliable narrator?”

Haruka laughed. “I know, I know, I know. There’s talk about maybe rebooting the series though. Saw it on Facebook today.” She bumped Michiru with her shoulder. “You look absolutely wrecked, you have since you got home. Is everything okay?”

She couldn’t tell Haruka. As much as she wanted to. The words wouldn’t come. How did one even begin to explain what she was going through – what it felt like to have someone else’s memories cramming themselves into her head and trying to force them to jumble together with her own. How could she even being to tell Haruka about the monsters she snuck out at night to kill whenever she felt the cold pull of them roaming the London streets. She’d killed a one in Whitechapel not two days ago, before Haruka returned from her final training ride for this race. The guilt ate away at her – for there was nothing to be done, nothing to be said about this.

This was her burden to shoulder alone.

“It’s nothing. I’m absolutely knackered after the rehearsal is all. Clive – Laura and Marcus’s manager – made us go through the song about 40 times before he was satisfied. I feel awful for them. Their contract is absolute shite.” Michiru shook her head. “It doesn’t matter if _they_ think the song is good – it’s about what he thinks. And frankly, I don’t think the song can get any better. You know how I feel about Laura and Marcus. They’re good kids – have a _lot_ of money to fool around with – but really aren’t the most talented out there.”

“Why did you take the collaboration offer then?” Haruka asked. They’d had this conversation before. Michiru knew that her response was part of the why Haruka liked asking so much. Banter was the fuel of any relationship, and if Haruka was going to leave the door open like that, Michiru was fully going to take advantage of it. Besides, it would get her out of this funk.

“Because the rent was due.”

Haruka giggled. “You can say no, you know. We aren’t starving artists.”

“We might be if you do another one of those weird Japanese adverts.”

“Oh come on, I make a great stud biker.”

Michiru shook her head. “That’s… not what that means. Unless you want to start wearing leather and strapping all the time…”

Haruka flushed crimson.

“Not that I would mind…” Michiru continued, leaning forward and collecting her dinner from the coffee table. She did enjoy doing this, teasing Haruka came so easily too. She hadn’t grown up being taught to speak her mind regardless of where it went. She was quiet in her desire, when Michiru could get quiet… well, she enjoyed teasing at any rate. “We haven’t fooled around in a club in _ages_ and there’s a Tuesday night party at G.A.Y. that we’d fit right in at.” She stuck her fork into the bowl and something wicked took her. “We’d have to stay in the basement though, you know how the men upstairs can be. Wouldn’t want them flirting with you.”

Groaning, Haruka rested her forehead on Michiru’s shoulder. “You’re awful.”

Michiru ruffled her hair. “And you’re fun to tease.”

Laughing, they went about their dinner.

x

The memories were at their worst after fights. Michiru thought that by accepting destiny that she was free and in the clear, she was fighting on the side of good and the memories would fall neatly into place after that. She was wrong, so utterly wrong it was shocking.

She fell to her knees in the middle of some abandoned street, looking around and breathless. The monster was dead, decaying in the moonlight at her feet. Where even was she? Michiru looked around, squinting up at the buildings for a street marker. Wandsworth – she’d chased the monster miles from home, leaping over rooftops and running so fast she felt like the wind itself. How she was able to move so quickly, to force herself to then drop to the ground and fight the creature, was anyone’s guess. 

“Your memories are returning.” From behind her came Pluto’s voice. She stood in the shadow of a street lamp, not in uniform but still with her staff grasped loosely in her hands before her. “Faster than I had anticipated.”

“Was I meant to stay in the dark?” Michiru spat out, wiping her mouth and getting to her feet. The wounds she’d suffered, the most concerning of which a deep cut to her arm which now bleed freely into the pristine white of her glove, was already starting to knit together. Another marvel of this state, another sign she was no longer entirely human. “Be a tool for you until the Silence comes?” Michiru let the transformation drop, the blood vanishing but the tear in her jacket remaining. 

Overhead, the moon was full.

Pluto looked away, her expression cast into shadow. “We are but pawns in the grand game of time, Michiru. Our pasts, our futures, they are all at the mercy of time’s inevitable march forward.” She turned then, and set her staff’s base to touch the ground. It echoed, a resolute clang in the abandoned night as it settled there. “You remembering Neptune – the Silver Millennium – that is by design as well. However…” She started to move toward Michiru, each footstep deliberate. “It complicates matters for you to recall the past so quickly. It is not yet time for you to meet the others, for the Silence is fast approaching, yes, but it is not yet time.”

“What happens when it is time?”

“You will go to the conflict. You will fight. You will find the talisman inside a pure heart, and you will save the world.”

“And the white princess?”

“Need not know of this.”

“How can you say that? Shouldn’t this time be different? Shouldn’t we be allowed to bathe in her light, Setsuna?” Michiru spoke Pluto’s name in this life like a curse. It felt alien on her tongue, on the language she’d slipped into as the memory gripped her at the battle’s close. Everything was strange now. Everything was miserable. “I want to fight by her side, not be cast out into the darkness of the Outer Rim.”

“That world no longer exists, Michiru. And she is far from here, sleeping, the princess locked safely away within her mind.” Setsuna tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “If we are lucky, she will never have to know of this.”

Michiru bowed her head, not out of acquiescence, but out of sorrow. There was no point struggling with Setsuna about her perceived unfairness of the past – of dying so far from the Moon’s light. The woman was a cypher, and Michiru was certain she knew more than she was letting on. “What of Venus and the others?”

“They are safe, well, always from this fight also.”

A long, weary sigh escaped Michiru’s lips. “Will the memories improve?”

“No.”

“Will I stop seeing _her?_ ” The lover in her dreams – the one Michiru desperately wished she could forget and yet was terrified of losing. Each thought was a betrayal, and Haruka’s smiling face was everywhere.

“That, Michiru, is written in the stars.”

“Bugger your blasted stars,” Michiru sighed. She fingered the tear in her jacket. “How am I meant to explain this?” Haruka wasn’t stupid. She at least had the blessed cover of saying she was going to her parents for dinner that evening, so Haruka wasn’t up late wondering why she hadn’t come home from the rehearsal at the usual time.

“Caught on a scaffolding? The city is always under construction, after all.”  There was a bemused smirk playing at Setsuna’s lips. Michiru wanted to hate her, but there was something so pleasant about the gentleness of her teasing, when the levity of the moment receded and Michiru was left with just herself and the only other human – or not quite human as the case may be – who understood the situation. She wanted to befriend this woman, yet the words would not come to her. She did not know how to ask where Setsuna lived, if she wanted to get a coffee sometime, if they could get to know each other outside of the lies they lived.

“You should clean the cut when you get home. Wouldn’t want it to get infected. You know how the NHS is these days.” Setsuna bent, and pulled her mobile from her purse. The staff was gone, put away into whatever pocket of time and space kept it safe when not in use. She flipped it open and shone the mobile’s screen light into the tear in Michiru’s jacket and shirt. “You stayed as Neptune long enough for it to close mostly. That is good. We do not heal as quickly in this lifetime.” She snapped the phone shut.

The words died in Michiru’s throat. The question lingered. “Are we to be friends, this time around,” the name she spoke then was old, old as time itself. The name meant to broach familiarity between them, something Neptune would have known, but Michiru certainly wouldn’t have.

“I don’t know.” Setsuna answered in kind. “I fear it is not yet time for us to know such things.”

“Could we try?”

“One supposes.”

“That’s vague.” Michiru nudged Setsuna with her shoulder as the watched the last of the monster fade away and dug for her own mobile. “Would you like to share a cab?” At least she could find out where Setsuna lived.

“You’re going opposite of me, I’m afraid. I’m in Barnet.”

“Christ, that’s far.” 

“You sound almost American when you talk like that.”

“My ah… partner is American.”

“I see.” And then just like that, she was gone, vanished into the night. Michiru sighs and calls a cab, tells the man Goldsmiths, and lets him drive her back to Lewisham and doesn’t speak a word to him as she far overpays him for the trip and laments the lack of the tube this late at night. Setsuna and her far off Barnet address can bugger right off.

“You going to be alright? This neighbourhood isn’t good at night.”

“I’ve lived here for years,” Michiru answers. She and Haruka could afford to move closer to work, could afford to move to a place where it’s safer, but Michiru is a creature of habit and it’s easy to live in the same flat when the landlord is a sweet old woman from Zimbabwe and doesn’t make a fuss about Haruka and Michiru both keeping odd hours.

“Suit yourself, lass.” The cabbie says before he drives off.

Michiru cuts through the park and heads home, retreating into the shower as is her habit before crawling into bed beside Haruka.  Haruka who is warm and pliant and doesn’t ask questions about why Michiru is getting in at two in the morning when she’d just gone round to her parents. An excuse is on her lips anyway. “We watched a movie,” she confesses.

Haruka mumbles sleepily and tugs Michiru closer, it is easy then, to slip into the world of dreams where the past is an ever-lurking specter.

x

The memories which chased her that night were not of dying, nor were they of the world Michiru now felt as acutely as any loss she’d ever felt in her life. These memories, it seemed, were the worst of her curse. The touch of a lover, leaning over her, pushing into her, kissing her in some darkened corner of a ball room, rucking up her skirts so skin could press against reverent skin. Recalling how scandalized her mother had been in that time, yet how charmed she was by this dashing woman from their twin home world. “She’s tilted, just like Uranus. Just a little odd and ever so charming.”

“She is the heir to that throne, mother,” Michiru hears Neptune’s voice in her head, speaking that lyrical tongue that is both alien and familiar, déjà vu and a welcome homecoming after years away. Michiru craves hearing it in the memories, and hates that she does. “Tilted though she may be.”

“You should not let her take advantage of you like that,” her mother sniffed sharply. “At a _ball_ , no less.”

“Mother,” the exasperation in the tone was so familiar, so painful it hurt. “If you think I was not in complete control of that situation, you have underestimated _years_ of your good parenting.” She recalled smiling at her mother, so many lifetimes ago, Setsuna’s words echoing in her ears. _Written in the stars_. It had felt as inevitable then as it did now. “Anything that happened at the ball was entirely of my own design, and utterly intentional.”

The memory shifted then, and Michiru found herself staring up at a clear blue sky, far bluer than any she’d ever seen on earth. A hand was on her breast, and lips were at her neck, biting, teasing, enticing a gentle whimper. It felt so good, to be free like this, to lay out under the distant sun and bathe in the gentle light showing down from Triton, hanging ever present in the sky at this time of year. The hand slipped lower, cupping between her legs and pressing with the familiarly and practice of one well accustomed to their lover’s body. Michiru gripped hard on the shoulders of the woman above her – faceless – always faceless. She could never recall a face.

Michiru woke with a start, and groaned quietly. The dreams were getting worse. Rolling over, she opened her eyes. She was resigned to not sleeping any more tonight. Memories of Neptune’s faceless lover, and of their whirlwind romance was enough to cast sleep furthest from her mind. The liaisons in her dreams were dishonest, torturous renditions of something which Was Not and Could Never Be. Michiru had Haruka, this woman – this ghost from her past – was just that.

Who believed that much in destiny anyway?

Haruka's face was bathed in moonlight, a slight sheen of sweat covered her face as she slept.  She looked ruggedly beautiful in this light, innocent without the harsh lines on her fact that appeared during the day – making her look severe.  Michiru was the only one who could boast that she'd seen this face, this very private face of the increasingly public figure of Haruka Tenou. It was in these moments that Michiru found herself counting all the myriad ways and reasons why she loved this woman.  In these moments of quiet stillness where she could see Haruka bathed in the moon’s white light – and play act in her mind that it was Haruka in the memories all along. Haruka, her beautiful prince, her dashing lover from the tilted planet.

It was nice to think of such things.

Her breath caught as Haruka’s face scrunched up, wincing as though it was in pain. Haruka raised her hand, unwaking, but clearly reaching out for something Michiru could not see.  She muttered something, and tears colored the corners of her eyes.  “Stop – Stop!” The desperation in Haruka’s sleep-muted voice filled Michiru with panic. She reached out, touching Haruka’s arm, lacing her fingers around Haruka’s outstretched hand. It was no good, Haruka would not wake.

Nightmares were not uncommon in this household, but it was usually Michiru who had them and Haruka who did the soothing.  Michiru pressed herself to Haruka’s side and tried to bury the thoughts of her own nightmares. The Silence was fast approaching – they would die before they could truly realize their lives – before they could truly live. She did not how to stop the silence alone. But if Michiru knew one thing, she knew would not lose Haruka to the Silence, and she would _not_ dwell on those horrible visions.

Haruka’s hand gripped the bedsheet. She was shaking.  Michiru pulled her as close as she dared. Nightmares like this were something Michiru knew well. She held Haruka, because that was all she could do. It would not be until Haruka’s mind and body were ready to wake that she would be able to ask what Haruka had seen and why it was so horrible.

“My love,” she breathed, her mind still half-caught on the memory of Neptune’s past. “Be still.” When she spoke the words came out in that lyrical, foreign tongue of her memories. “Rest now, the world will not end this night.” Beside her, Haruka stilled. Michiru held Haruka as tightly as she dared, whispering promises into her ear – things she’d never dared to speak of out loud – truths about the past and about her fears for the future. Haruka was stuck in dream, and Michiru finally found the words to be honest with her. “I think I’m losing my mind,” she confessed. “Because the girl in my memories reminds me so much of you.”

She would die to stop the Silence. Even if Michiru Kaiou was not ready to end her life, Neptune’s destiny dictated the moment: she would lay down her life to stop the end of the world. It was her duty, and she would do it gladly. This mission was to be her only one on this Earth – so very far away from home.

_I don’t want to die_. Michiru thought bitterly. She stared at Haruka, calming now as her dreams surely turned to better things. She did not want to lose her to this vision of a girl from Neptune’s past. She scooted closer to Haruka, tucking herself under Haruka’s arm and pressing her back against Haruka’s taller frame. She could not lose herself to the great wheel of destiny. There were things to fight for – a future to fight for. She was not some ghost with no chance at living. The past was a crutch, a place to live when there was nothing to move forward to. Neptune’s love was dead. And old lovers should stay buried.

x

Yet they were drifting apart. Busy people did, Michiru knew it. She’d lamented as much to her mother, who told her not to worry. Haruka still came home to Michiru after every race smiling and drunk on victory, and Michiru still got to bring the most charming of dates to red carpet events. “These things happen, Mitch,” she told her Michiru, using a childhood nickname from around the time Michiru first came out as a lesbian to her parents. Michiru grimaced at it now. She’d been trying to sound more western, to fit in with her posh English friends who saw her foreign name and her father’s Japanese passport and assumed she was some sort of immigrant there on charity. It, thankfully, hadn’t stuck. “You’re busy people. That girl is going to ask you to marry her one day, just you wait.”

Michiru’s cheeks burned. “You think?”

“Mothers know these things. Trust me, when I met your grandmother, I could tell by the look in her eyes that she _knew_ and she wasn’t pleased. I half expected things to end that night, but your father stood firm in the promise he made to me, and he didn’t ever back down when she said I wasn’t good enough.”

“Mum you’re a doctor.”

“I’m not a _Japanese_ doctor.” Her mother raised her mug of tea to her lips. “That makes all the difference in the world to some people’s parents.”

“I hate people.”

“Mmmmn.” Her mother hummed her agreement. She picked up a biscuit and broke it in half, offering the larger half to Michiru. “Don’t fret over Haruka. She loves you more than she loves that bicycle of hers.”

Michiru took the biscuit and nibbled at the chocolate on the corners. It wasn’t often her mother baked these days, but her homemade digestive biscuits were exceptional as always. “It’s nearly her birthday, mum. We’ve seen each other four times since Christmas. That’s four times in as many weeks. We live together, for Pete’s sake.”

“And it is high summer all over the southern hemisphere and Haruka is one of the top road cyclists in the world. You have had two major concerts in Paris in the past month which happened to coincide with the one week where Haruka was free. She came with us to the second one. I seem to recall you two disappearing off into the night only to come back drunk and looking quite debauched.”

“Well, it isn’t often one gets to go clubbing in Paris.”

Her mother chucked. “Ah, to be young again.”

“I just miss her, mum.” _Like a hole in my heart_. Michiru bit the biscuit, but tasted nothing but sandpaper. “This race in Brazil – I’m worried about it. It’s so far away and the roads are so dangerous there.”

“She’ll be alright, Michiru.”

Sometimes, Michiru wished for her mother’s faith.

x

Haruka came back from the race in Brazil _changed_. Michiru couldn’t describe it, but something was not right about the way she moved around the apartment, the way she continued to have nightmares, and the way she would disappear for long hours, riding her bike through the bleak English winter. “I can’t sleep,” Haruka confessed one night as they lay together, sweaty and exhausted. The moon was nearly full, shining like midwinter daylight into the apartment. “I don’t know what happened, but ever since I came back, I just… I can’t.”

“You’re having nightmares.” Michiru answered. “Is it the stress from the races you’ve done lately?”

“Two majors since Christmas and one sprint set was probably too much, I think.” Haruka sighed.  “It’s fucked with my head.” She turned onto her side, her fingers splaying out over Michiru’s stomach. “I just keep seeing kids consumed by monsters – eaten alive, blood everywhere. What do you think a shrink would say about that?"

“That you need to stop watching the X-Files,” Michiru pointed out. “The show is _creepy_ , Haruka, and monsters eating people alive? That sounds like something out of the two episodes we watched last night.”

It also sounded like Michiru’s early dreams of the Silence, and of her fights of late – running around London chasing after ghosts of creatures which should not – could not, be real. But Michiru would not entertain such a hope. No, Haruka needed to be kept far, _far_ away from such idle fantasies. Even if Michiru had a choice to not be alone in her battle, she would never want it to be Haruka. Haruka deserved a normal life and happiness. Not death waiting for her at every turn.

“Well,” Haruka grinned. “It’s better than that idol crap you’ve been watching recently.” She pronounced ‘idol’ the way they pronounced it in Japanese, drawing out the syllables and adding extra vowels. She looked ridiculous doing it. Michiru giggled.

“It is _research_ , Haruka. You know my manager wants me to cash in on my heritage and work with some Japanese pop-idols. I need to figure out who they _are_ before I can work with them. Not as though I can just tune into Radio One and figure out who they are.”  She sighed. “Young musicians are so boorish – especially coming out of the factories they churn them out in over there. It’s hard to tell what’s real.”

“So watching all of her videos on YouTube is what?” Haruka poked Michiru’s cheek. “A crush?”

“Hardly.” Michiru rolled her eyes.  “It’s me trying to figure out how _real_ she is.”

“And what does your bullshit meter read, Ms. Kaiou?”

Michiru shrugged. “She seems genuine enough. Sad story though. She had brain cancer.” Michiru didn’t mention the other, perhaps more shocking revelation of research she’d been doing. The very sight of the girl wearing a blonde wig for a Promotional Video for one of her newer songs, trying to do her best Taylor Swift impression on guitar (and probably being a little better at it, being older and less inclined to country music than Swift) and stuck a cord in Michiru’s memory. A girl from a tropical world, perched atop a dais, singing to a gaggle of adoring courtesans with the blue green planet Earth hovering in the window behind her.

_My_ , Michiru had thought, _how very, very small this world is._

The girl was so obviously Venus that Michiru, upon watching her original hit single, felt as though she’d been slapped in the face. _C’est La Vie?_ Michiru had done French through A-Levels and had spent summer in Paris during uni. It wasn’t as though she was ignorant either, speaking Japanese from childhood. She knew how the words sounded with a Japanese accent, she understood the double entendre. She’d just never thought Venus, who in her memories was a somber and serious woman, would be so flippant about such things.

“Do you want to do the duet?” Haruka asked. “Like, I know your manager doesn’t really have that say because of your new contract” – Michiru’s new contract was a coup de grace, written with a clause from a consulting lawyer from Barnet which would allow her to withdraw from performances if necessary with no cost to her earnings. Setsuna was a solicitor by day, and she’d offered to assist Michiru in ensuring she’d be allowed to continue to fight, should her career become any more high profile. “- but do you like this girl enough to actually want to do something with her?”

“Haruka, I’ve done instrumentals for _grime_. J-Pop is actually not that far afield.”

“Yeah, but grime is actually good. Hilarious and English, but good. J-Pop idols are just so… I don’t know they’re always doing more – extra.” Haruka pushed herself up and sighed. “I’m going to try and shower – see if that makes me sleepy.”

“We could always… go again, that always tires you out.” Michiru raised an eyebrow and let her eyes rake down Haruka’s body, looking and unashamed to be doing just that.

Haruka bent and kissed Michiru gently, hungrily, but gently. “You have a seven thirty call time tomorrow, I have practice at six. We both need to sleep, though the idea is temping.”

“Look at you, suddenly the responsible one.” Michiru jokingly reached for her phone and flipped it open. “Let me call the papers.”

“Don’t you _dare_.” Haruka batted the phone away, laughing. “The world is not ready for us to be responsible adults.”

“We are twenty four.”

“Well, you are.”

“Yes. Ancient and decrepit me.” Haruka moved to the loo and flipped the shower on, still giggling.

Michiru curled up and drew the duvet over herself, shivering despite the heating whirring to life and the radiator creaking slightly. The building was old. They really did need to move at some point. Lewisham was too far from everywhere they needed to be in Central London. Haruka’s training facilities were practically in Surrey, which was a good hour by train at the best of times.

Her mind was caught on the thought of performing with that idol, still. She thought back to how she’d mentioned it to Setsuna two days before, after drowning a monster by holding _Deep Submerge_ over its head and presumably its nose until it stopped moving. “I do not think this collaboration is a good idea.” Setsuna confessed, drawing her staff across the monster’s body and splitting it neatly in two with a beam of light so precise Michiru’s mind longed for the control Setsuna had over her abilities as Pluto. “You know her, but who is to say she knows you?”

“Well, you,” Michiru had answered, rubbing at her shoulder. It hung awkwardly, crooked and probably dislocated at her side. She started to walk toward the pedestrian bridge not twenty paces away, intent on a solid wall to correct the issue.  Setsuna followed, silent. And when Michiru could not bring herself to experience the pain of pushing her shoulder back into place, she held Michiru steady and shoved her hard against the wall.  The pain was hot and angry as the ball popped back into its socket. Tears sprung unbidden to the corners of Michiru’s eyes.

“Stay transformed.” Setsuna insisted, her fingers gripping Michiru’s hand tightly. “Or else you _will_ have to go to the hospital and you won’t be playing anything for weeks.”

“Is she Venus?” Michiru breathed

“Yes.” Setsuna answered. “And she knows it. If she will know you is another matter. I cannot say, but the silence does not concern the inner guard. It is your burden – yours and your partners, should her powers ever wake.”

“So it’s unwise to want to meet her, regardless of the inner guard’s involvement with the coming calamity.” Michiru tried to raise her arm, but hissed when pain lanced through her body.  Together she and Setsuna moved into the shadows of the bridge. “She seems more audacious in this lifetime.”

Setsuna hummed her agreement.

“Is she a threat to the mission?”

“Honestly, Michiru, no, she is not. I do not think you should collaborate with her, but it is your life and your career. I can no more stop you from breathing than I can alter the path of the destiny you now find yourself upon. You are called to a higher purpose. If your purpose tells you to meet Venus, then you should meet her. I may find it unwise, but it is your choice.”

In that moment, Michiru resolved to meet the girl who was Venus. One her shoulder was healed enough for them to part ways, she called her manager and gave her answer.  She would collaborate with Aino Minako.

x

A week later, Setsuna texted Michiru an address. There was nothing more than that. She did not pick up when Michiru tried to call her for more details and googling the address showed it was somewhere in Greenwich and little else. Michiru let Neptune fall into her being, and took to the rooftops, moving quickly and efficiently through the growing night.

The car park was largely abandoned as the hour was growing late. Michiru had texted Haruka to say she’d gotten stuck and had missed the train. It was an excuse which would buy her an hour, maybe more.  Setsuna stood transformed in a pool of moonlight against the shadow of a garage, leaning on her staff and looking pensive.

“Pluto,” Michiru said in greeting.

“Neptune.”  Pluto responded curtly. 

“What’s going on?”

Pluto looked past Michiru to the garage proper, to where a woman lay face down in the dirt, a monster crumbled just beyond her. “I want you to stand here,” she said. “And I want you to watch.”

“Is that—” Hope and dread filled her belly.

“Your partner, yes. She is about to take the mantle.”

“If she picks it up, she’ll have no chance for a normal life.” Michiru exhales. “No chance to…” She squinted. Her vision was better in the dark, but she could see very little. Just the glowing navy blue of the rod and the woman’s tanned hand reaching for it, as though in wonderment. 

“She defeated the creature without transforming. Instinct. She will be a good partner for you.” Pluto placed a heavy hand on Michiru’s shoulder. “This is mean to be. Let it happen.”

“She should get a _choice_ ,” Michiru snarled. “Like I didn’t.”

Pluto’s grip was iron, and Michiru could do nothing but watch as the woman’s fingers grasped the rod and the transformation fell into place around her. And then, there, was Uranus – as tall and as proud as she’d always been – standing as though she’d stepped from Michiru’s memories. A sob choked in Michuru’s throat, and a slight smile played at Pluto’s lips. “This is not our first meeting, but it will be yours. Do try to contain any outbursts. There’s only so long we can disrupt the CCTV for.”

They moved forward as one. Michiru stopping a few paces back as Pluto stepped forward. “Sailor Uranus.” She spoke the common tongue of old, and Michiru was surprised when Uranus answered in kind. Answered and stood stock still when she caught sight of Neptune – Michiru – hovering just outside the pool of moonlight where she stood. The white moon made her beautiful. “Welcome.”

The face then, the face and the kind eyes and the crooked smile – they all slid firmly into place and Michiru forgot herself in the joy of the moment. This was her, the lover she could not remember – the one she wished to forget entirely. This was _her._ She lost all control, and pushed herself forward on unsteady legs. One step, two steps, until she was in the woman’s arms and kissing her as though lost.

_You left me all alone._

_You left me._

_I missed you._

Words echoed in Michiru’s head, words she hadn’t spoke for nigh one thousand years. Words bubbling fort as if unbidden, begging to be spoken. Words she’d never said to Uranus, words she’d never dared speak out loud. Theirs was a forbidden romance, the Outer Guard were not meant to mingle, let alone progress though life itself. Michiru could remember reminiscing on the unfairness of it all, on how She longed, desperately, for the salvation true love could bring her.

“Hello.”  Uranus’ voice was distant, accented, when she pulled away. And Michiru noted she did not pull away directly. She exhaled, her breath fogging in the air before them. “I… take it I’m to work with you?”

“This is Sailor Neptune,” Pluto explained from behind the pair of them. “She is to be your partner.”

“Well damn,” Uranus replied.  “I already have one.”

Michiru backed away, her expression hardening under the blue green hair she sported while transformed. “As do I.” She cleared her throat. “This won’t happen again, a thousand apologies. I got caught up on the idea of reunion and Serenity’s grace, Uranus, I missed you so much.” The words were diplomatic, but they were not Michiru’s words, they were Neptune understanding the situation and retreating to better assess things. She knew of Haruka, Michiru knew that, and she knew of Michiru’s uncompromising love. It was all Michiru could do to stay engaged with battle these days with how distant Haruka had become. Throwing herself at some other woman would not solve the problem. No, it would only make it worse.

“It is no bother,” Uranus answered. “I … understand what it feels like.”

“You’ve just transformed for the first time.”

“I have been fighting for months now. Pushing back in my memories, in my nightmares. I kept my partner awake for weeks on end while in the throes of a particularly bad one. I cannot keep on like this. I doubt being sentimental toward another will engender much sympathy for my cause.”

Pluto, from her position beyond, hummed her agreement. “You both are of the age where such … dalliances are built out of necessity rather than choice. And you both are happily paired. Why not simply work as peers and forget the romance of the past?”

_That is…_ Michiru thought darkly. _Easier said than done._


	4. Chapter Four

_London, Spring, Two Years Ago_

Uranus wasn’t English. Her accent screamed _American_ once Michiru allowed herself to relax enough around the woman to speak as they would in this life, rather than that of the past life. Uranus always responded in kind, no matter how she was addressed when fighting. The language of her mountainous world was far from the lyrical tongue of Neptune. It was gruff, harsh, and full of guttural stops that reminded Michiru both of Russian and Hebrew. Consonants strung together and playing the roles of vowels to dizzying effect. It was hard, in this life, for her tongue to form the words of the past – so she set it aside for when they knew each other better, for when Michiru could push away the unbidden joy which welled up within her whenever Uranus came too close, or spoke too fondly.

Setsuna was, in a word, unhelpful, regarding the situation. She made herself scarce and would not answer Michiru’s texts or phone calls, asking for help to better understand what was happening to her – to _them_ – and what Uranus’s awakening meant for the mission. They were to fight, Setsuna said, until the directive changed.

Michiru did not want to fight with Uranus. She did not want to be close to Uranus at all, because the woman had invaded her dreams and plagued her every waking moment. Even the violin, long her sanctuary, could not save her from the ever-present thoughts of the woman. Images of their fights now blended with balls and the strange hollow feeling of the memories of daily life on Neptune which now flooded her mind. All Michiru saw was Uranus, and the guilt she felt over the strength of the longing which filled her in those moments was crippling.

“You’re so melancholy these days,” her father commented one afternoon when they’d met at a pub not far from the daunting authoritarian structure of Senate House Library, where he’d given a talk. Michiru’s practice session had ended early, and she hadn’t wanted to stay to listen to the latest round of contract negotiations with Aino Minako’s management team. Her mind was scattered these days, and seeing her parents helped. “More than you usually are.”

“I’m English. We don’t emote.” Michiru responded dryly.

He laughed at her, reaching across the table to touch her forearm. His hand was so warm, so different from the dead man who plagued her dreams of the silence. “I remember you in sixth form, Michiru. You emote.”

“I’d just had a horrible breakup,” Michiru frowned. The girl had been so cruel, her first girlfriend, disappeared off to uni and hadn’t spoken a word to her in weeks, only to ring her out of the blue to say it was over. Michiru raged against the world that day, sobbing into her mother’s arms while her father stroked her back and told her things would be okay in the way only he could do. His was the comfort Michiru wanted now, but he couldn’t know everything – she didn’t know how to tell him. “I’m worried I’m about to have another one.”

“ _What_?” He sat up straighter, his blazer bunching at his chest. “But you and Haruka… Who is she?”

“A colleague. One I’ve met recently. I feel like there’s this force that’s _pushing_ us together, Dad. I don’t know what to do about it because I don’t want it – but I feel like it’s inevitable. Like the crush of destiny is behind it.”

“Can you avoid this person? Never speak to them again?” He sighed, his expression darkening. “I sound like my mother.” He wet his lips and met Michiru’s eyes. “Mitch, you’re just a kid still. I can’t tell you to do anything other than to live your life, but I’ve seen how you and Haruka are. You love each other, desperately, to the point where it makes my teeth ache it’s so saccharine sweet. I don’t know if you’re wanting to throw that all away because things have been hard recently, or because you’re both so busy, but I don’t … I don’t want you to lose her unless that’s what you truly want.”

“I don’t want to lose her either dad.” Michiru’s hands were clenched into fists on the table. She couldn’t think of Uranus, and of how bewitching the woman’s smile was – or how her stomach roiled with the disquiet feeling of uncertainty whenever she stood too close. “I just don’t know…”

He got to his feet and came ‘round the table to stand beside her, before going to one knee before her. It was a gesture Michiru was unaccustomed to in this lifetime, men on their knees before her. Yet another reminder of a past where she was someone else – someone to whom such gestures were common place. Yet this was her _father_ and she should not feel the regal smugness at the gesture. He was her rock, her guide, as strong a bond as she had in this life.

“I want you to think about it, Michiru.” He said, placing both hands on her knee. “Think about it and let your heart guide you to the answer you want. That’s all you can do. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Michiru had bowed her head in respect, and had whispered her reply. “I will try, dad. I promise.”

The problem was, trying was harder in practice. Uranus was a compliment to Michiru in every respect on the battlefield – a brash, physical fighter who preferred melee to the more balanced, ranged attacks Michiru favored. They moved like wind and water – in perfect harmony as they danced around their foe and each other. The ease bothered Michiru, the way Uranus never had to ask or sketch out a battle plan before they just sprang into action – a swirl of cherry blossoms around them. They just _knew_ what to do as though they’d been doing it for years and fear never gripped Michiru quite so strongly in those moments when they were together.  It was when she allowed herself to entertain the idea of the silence being stoppable. Maybe everyone she loved wouldn’t die.

“We complement each other,” Uranus said as she ducked as Michiru unleashed _Deep Submerge_ over her head. “I bob, you weave.”

“We’re not _boxing_ ,” Michiru shot back. She pivoted on her heel and took Uranus’s hand as she flung herself backward, the preternatural strength of the transformation launching Uranus high into the air as she called the earth to rupture beneath their foe. Sports metaphors, particularly American sounding ones, were something Haruka said sometimes when describing synchronous people. Unease, coupled by the paranoia of the fight at hand, gripped Michiru. Uranus’s accent, the way she smiled. There were too many signs to feed Michiru’s doubt and make this all seem like the best dream she’d ever had.

She had to put a stop to this, the madness of her nightmares replaced by a hope and a prayer of a future which could never be. Uranus gave no indication she recalled the past, save for when they were catching their breath after battles, Michiru leaning against a building and Uranus, hand on the wall by Michuru’s ear, would lean down and press her lips to Michiru’s with the sad smile of a lover who knew things were not meant to be. She pushed Uranus away in those moments. She would not cheat on Haruka.

“Fine, we’re _dancing_ ,” Uranus shot back. Her accent was American. There was no doubt about it now. While it was hidden behind the accented consonants of Uranus’s native tongue, when she poke in English, it was plain as day. “Some crusty British waltz that they haven’t done in forever except at the most high end of parties. Does that satisfy you, Princess of Neptune?”

Uranus landed on one knee beside Michiru and brushed a strand of sandy blonde hair from her eyes, squinting at the monstrous beast before them. It was a large bug-like creature, nearly two stories tall. Its mouth alone was the size of her father’s Renault. Its mandibles clicked as it struggled to recover itself from Uranus’s last attack. Its head was, as Uranus put it earlier, on a swivel, with a bank of unblinking eyes taking them in from every possible angle. Michiru wished Pluto was here. This creature was too big for just the two of them to handle.

“I could be persuaded,” Michiru answered diplomatically. As though on autopilot, she extended one hand to Uranus, who pressed a kiss to its gloved surface while never breaking eye contact. “You are of a noble house yourself,” she added, her voice small. “A dashing prince of the mountainous tilted planet. A girl could find you dangerous.”

Uranus rose to her feet and gave a mock bow to Michiru, twisting her toward the enemy until it exploded in the warm brown light of Uranus’s power. It was an unnecessary display of raw power, the sort which sent a hum through Michiru and sparked a deep desire in her to have that power all to herself. “I would do a great many things, my lady,” Uranus said, “for a chance to win your favor.”

Michiru looked away. “You know I have a partner in this life. Our past lives cannot dictate --” The sound of rapidly approaching sirens cut her off. They needed to leave the scene before they were noticed. Michiru jerked her head to the sky and Uranus nodded.  They took to the rooftops and ran as far as they could from this battlefield – chasing the train tracks back south over the river and into East London, back to safety and the protection of their routine and careful avoidance of the conversation at their lips.

When Michiru finally slowed it was outside the low bunker like structure of the DLR stop near to her and Haruka’s apartment.

“Good fight.”  Uranus said diplomatically, landing beside Michiru. She grinned at Michiru and Michiru’s cheeks burned. She looked so much like Haruka when she smiled like that, so much that Michiru’s inner turmoil ratcheted up by a manner of degrees. “I don’t want you to feel pressured to be anything to me other than who you are, Neptune.”

“I—”

“But I want you to listen to me about something. We were drawn together in this life for a reason, were we not?”

“Yes, to fight the silence.”

Uranus shook her head. “No, before that.”

“I don’t know you, Uranus, how could I possibly answer that question?”  Michiru felt weary at the proposal, as though this beautiful woman was whittling away her control until she would be unable to refuse the pull of her memories and longing to have Uranus once more to call her own. “We are here to fight the Silence. We do not know each other outside of this capacity.”

“What of who we were?” Uranus closed her eyes. “I see so much. I see Venus and the others of the Inner Guard dead at my feet and the Princess of the Moon remaking the world again and again even when there is no hope. I see you in the Moon’s distant light, defiant, to the end when life goes from your lips. I see myself lost without you as the glaive falls and we all perish. Why must I bear this burden alone when you are _right here_?”

“The memories are painful,” Michiru felt as though she were underwater. “They plagued me for years before I understood what they meant. I went on medication, thinking I was manifesting schizophrenia. I lost so much sleep trying to put what I saw down on canvas. My partner,” She raised her gaze to meet Uranus’s eyes, “she told me—”

“Pretty girls shouldn’t paint such awful things.”

All the observations, the fear, the longing for an easy solution fell away. Michiru stood in her spring anorak, a thick sweater underneath, before this woman – the control of the transformation gone along with the gentle buzz of Neptune’s power and ever-present crush of memories about her head. All she could see was Uranus – and then Haruka and the moment of serendipity in Kyoto two years ago.

“I never told you why I left that day.” Haruka’s voice cracked with emotion. “I couldn’t find the words to tell you that you’d painted my dreams and they terrified me so much I couldn’t stand to be in the same room as you.”

Somewhere in the distance, a bell tolled twice. The moon hung low overhead, full and beautiful even in the glow of London. Michiru was here, in Lewisham, but her mind was somewhere else as well – a cracked asteroid speeding toward the moon, her stomach clenched in worry over the fate of the Queen and the Princess. They were forbidden to enter this place, and yet this was the only way they could _know_ the fate of their civilization.

“We’ve seen too much death,” Michiru whispered. “And the battle has only just begun.”

Haruka drew Michiru into her arms, the leather of her jacket creaking as she held Michiru close. “I’m a liar,” she confessed. “I’ve known since you first met Uranus but I couldn’t – I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t admit this was real. I didn’t want it to be.”

“You let me think I was cheating on you… you absolute arse!” Michiru pushed Haruka away. “You with your suave kisses and conflicting memories and just waltzing into my life and making me feel as though I had to make a choice!” She glared at Haruka. “How could you?”

Haruka sighed and ran a hand through her hair, looking up at the moon. “I thought maybe you’d reject me – us – entirely out of fear of compromising the mission. Things are happening now. You’re meeting Venus in a week’s time. Pluto – does she have a real name in this lifetime?”

Michiru, still not ready to forgive Haruka, replied, “Setsuna Meioh. She lives in Barnet and is a solicitor.”

“Of fucking course she is.”

“It suits her.”

“It does.” Haruka sighed once more. “Can we go inside, at least? It’s too cold to have this conversation. I’ll sleep on the couch. You can have the bed. I can’t ask you to forgive me so quickly.”

“Shouldn’t I also ask for your forgiveness, Haruka?” Michiru asked. The guilt of the lies she’d been telling for months now plagued her. It wasn’t just Haruka who’d been deceitful in the hopes of hiding her mission from Michiru. Michiru had done the same thing, and for far longer. Their relationship was such that neither felt the burden of the lies much, or at least Michiru hoped Haruka did not, but the press of that cruelty, and of her doubtful thoughts over her relationship with Haruka was too much. She could not, and would not, let this come between them. The only way out was honesty.  “I’ve been lying to you for over a year about what I saw in those dreams and about what I’ve been doing when you’re off training. That isn’t fair to you.”

Haruka caught her hand. “We haven’t been fair to each other,” she said, as she led Michiru through the night and toward their apartment and the warm sanctuary they’d carved for themselves out of this cold city. Inside Haruka kissed her and the power swirled around her once more, Uranus stared back at her and Michiru understood without needing to be asked what it was Haruka wanted. She took her lover’s hand and let Neptune’s power take her, her mind passing into memory as Uranus peeled her uniform from her body with expert ease born of many years of practice.

“ _Even in this life,_ ” Uranus whispered in her year, the language of her home world and its rolling hills and high, steep cliffs. “ _Yours is the only soul who will match mine._ ” Her hand twisted in Michiru’s hair, pulling it how Michiru liked it, drawing a groan from Michiru’s lips. She kissed Michiru’s neck, her teeth joining soon after, leaving Michiru hissing in pleasure at the bite.

“ _You said before there were many things you’d do to win my favor_ ,” Michiru answered. “ _My dashing prince_.” She pushed her hips forward and rolled Uranus onto her back. In this position, her hair fanned around her head like a sand-colored halo and the sign of her status still in place upon her forehead, Uranus looked far more like a princess than any fairytale prince, but Michiru knew of Haruka’s struggles with presentation, and how she embraced herself as she was, fluid, blending, butch in most things, but content to be both. She rolled her hips forward, grinding against Uranus’s stomach, a wave of exhilaration flooding through her. “ _Would you care to show me what you’d do?_ ”

Her lover smirked up at her and reached to draw her forward, pulling her up the bed until Michiru’s hands were on the headboard. She met Michiru’s eyes and raised her lips to worship at the altar of the woman who would be her lover for as many lifetimes as their souls would live. “I love you, Michiru,” she said, before dipping her head and pulling Michiru closer still.

Michiru’s words in response, caught in three languages and on the wave of pleasure cresting within her, were lost.

x

 

_London, Early Summer, Two Years Ago_

Michiru didn't know what to expect from meeting Aino Minako and confessed as much to Haruka over coffee at the Pr _ê_ t around the corner from Michiru’s agent’s offices and the studio space they’d be occupying for the next few months. “We know who she is and that she isn’t meant to be involved in this mission, but I want to know if she recalls anything at all,” Michiru explained to Haruka. “I’m curious about her and what happened before – Setsuna said she had brain cancer during the first round of attacks.”

“Setsuna said she’d died of it, but that the White Princess bought her back to life when she remade the world this time around” Haruka clarified. Michiru frowned and stole a tomato from Haruka’s salad. “Don’t look at me that way, I asked her about it when you were stuck in that all day meeting and we had to take care of one of the giant bugs again.”

“And she just… told you?” Michiru narrowed her eyes. “She won’t tell me anything.”

“Maybe you just don’t have the charm with the ladies.” Haruka’s tone was gentle in its teasing.

“I charmed you.” Michiru shot back, but her expression was thoughtful. She’d guessed Aino Minako would be like any of the other young popular artists she’d worked for, brash and a force to be reckoned with, an egomaniac who expected things to be done her way. The thought of death though, mortal death and not during a war, was something Michiru could not fathom. “She died…”

“Before the mission could be completed. Mars, apparently, didn’t take that well.” Haruka chewed thoughtfully on her lunch. “I don’t think you should go into this meeting expecting her to remember anything – or to be anything like the girl from the past, Michiru. That was two lifetimes ago for her and who is to say she hasn’t completely rejected her identity as a guardian after all that trauma?” 

“I dunno,” Michiru answered honestly. “I’m used to stars, but I’m worried she’ll see right through me.”

“To Neptune?” Haruka fiddled with her fork. “It would take a lot to dig that deeply, Michiru.” Haruka pushed the rest of her salad toward Michiru. “Can I eat the other half of your sandwich?”

Michiru nodded and exchanged their food with the practiced ease of one well used to Haruka’s eating habits. “Should I be worried?”

"No,” Haruka laughed. “Go meet her. Make music together. Get to know her outside of the past and then maybe we can figure out if they’ll interfere with the mission should we have to go to where the princess is to complete our task.” At Michiru’s eye roll, Haruka added, “Not that any of us want to go to Japan for that long.”

“Too right.” Michiru answered. They finished their lunch in peaceful silence and Haruka kissed her gently on the cheek before telling her she was doing three loops around Windsor Great Park with some of her cyclist friends for an off-day workout. Michiru walked with her to the Tube station and then walked back to the faceless office building where the meeting was to take place.  She drew a deep breath and went inside.

It was their hope that this meeting with Aino Minako, so clearly Sailor Venus and leader of the princess’s guard, would force things to move. The attacks were growing more frequent and Pluto had made herself scarce with the exceptions of when Haruka and Michiru both could not both be present at a fight.  This was by design, they both thought, so they could not present a united front against Pluto, and push her into revealing the true purpose of this mission and how they were going to find the talismans within the pure hearts of three random individuals.

The office space they were to work out of was sparsely furnished. Half the building was taken up by a boutique hotel, and when Michiru checked in with Liza, the security officer, she was surprised when she was directed not to her manager’s office as she’d initially expected, but to one of the floors occupied by the hotel. “Ms. Aino wanted to meet you privately,” Liza explained. “And since she’s staying in the city during the negotiations, it seemed only fair that we’d put her up.”

Michiru nodded. “I understand.”

“Third elevator love, go up to the Penthouse floor.”

“Classy,” Michiru laughed.

“Only the best,” Liza answered.

The penthouse floor was actually a series of suite-like apartments where the record label put up high status singers and executives in town for awards shows and recording gigs that required prolonged stays. When Michiru emerged from the elevator, she was greeted by a frazzled-looking Japanese woman was sitting outside a closed door, to the left of the elevator bank, a cellphone clutched in her hands.  She perked up when Michiru walked into the room, and hastily stood up and started to bow, catching herself just barely in time to see Michiru's amused smile. “I'm sorry,” the woman said in Japanese. 

“Don't worry about it,” Michiru replied, easily slipping into Japanese. She bowed as well, a bit deeper and more formally than the woman across from her.  “My name is Michiru Kaiou, I have an appointment with Ms. Aino to talk about some possible collaboration. Security said she was expecting me.”

The woman's eyes flew to her cellphone, and she clicked a few buttons before nodding.  “Ah yes, Ms. Kaiou. Forgive me if I ask you to wait for a few moments. Ms. Aino is meeting with a _friend_ who showed up rather unexpectedly and I don’t know how long they’ll be.”

“That’s quite alright,” Michiru answered. “I apologize for being slightly tardy myself. I was at lunch and lost track of the time.”

“Ms. Kaiou, you’re right on time.”

“Am I?” Michiru smiled pleasantly at the woman before her. “Well then thank goodness for small miracles. What was your name again?”

“Oh?  I'm just the manager's secretary.  No one important really, my name's Yamada Kazoko. My boss, Ms. Aino’s manager, is out for coffee with your manager, otherwise he’d be here to greet you.  Again, I sincerely apologize about the wait.”

“Please don’t worry about me,” Michiru reiterated. She was used to waiting. It seemed that it was all that she and Haruka did these days.  Pluto had hinted that a certain event was going to trigger their direct involvement in the conflict, but had been mum about _when_ exactly, this event was set to take place.

The door that Yamada Kazoko had been sitting in front of banged open and woman whose lips were drawn into a narrow scowl and her eyes were down swept but wet with barely disguised tears. Tension radiated off of her like a flickering flame, barely restrained and ready to spark into a full eruption of emotion at any moment.  Michiru stared openly as the woman swept past her to the elevators and jabbed the button, only to be called back by a flustered-looking Aino Minako standing in the penthouse doorway.

Michiru had seen enough of the girl’s promotional videos to be somewhat familiar with her facial expressions. She looked as though she’d just seen a ghost remake the world again, and her countenance could not hide the anguish of its witness. Aino Minako, a woman who was once Venus, stood in the doorway and her face stilled into a silent rage to match the other woman’s glare.

Power radiated off of the pair of them, cracking through the air unseen by the assistant but clear as day to Michiru’s eyes.  These were two _warriors_ , women who carried themselves with the grace of many years of training and battles.  They didn't seem to notice Michiru, or anyone else for that matter. Their eyes were trained on each other as the silent battle of wills played out between them.

Finally, finally, just as the elevator dinged and the doors opened, Aino Minako ground out, “Reiko, wait.” It was a concession, one which was not given lightly in this fight. Venus had never been one to back down from a fight. It was strange to see something like this, an almost desperate tone creeping into her voice as she stared at the other woman. “Please hear me out.”

_Mars Reiko_. Michiru stared down at her fingernails and recalled the Martian warrior, the second in command, the one who was closest to the princess out of all of her guard. The one whose death had lead Venus to suicide in the past life.

“Why?  You'll just say the same thing you always do, Mina.”  The woman's voice was rich and sensual, making her sound far older than the youth still clinging to her cheeks. There was power behind Mars's voice, and a lot of barely restrained hurt in the way she wobbled over the name. Venus had scarred this woman deeply, in this life.

Michiru wondered what she'd done.

_She died_ …

Oh.

“I'll come home soon, I promise.” Aino Minako's tone was quiet as she spoke. “I never meant to be away for this long, Reiko, you know that. I miss Japan, I miss my friends, I—” Her expression drew thin and the words died in the heavy silence which lingered over the small space they all occupied. She looked away, her cheeks coloring slightly in the warm light of the sunken overhead lights. “I miss you.”

“You just miss Usagi stalking you.”  Mars shot back, and her tone was a whip crack. Mars and Venus, even a millennia later, were at odds. She did not acknowledge Aino Minako’s admission, nor did her expression falter.

“Number One Fans do that, Reiko, it’s a normal part of the life I have chosen for myself.” She put her hands on her hips and a smirk played at her lips. “What's not normal is flying half way around the world just to yell at me.”

Mars looked away. Now she was blushing as well. Even now, even in this lifetime. “Whatever...” Mars scowled. “Look, I had a long layover so I came. I wanted to see you before your tour kicked off and you disappeared for months without a word – what if something happened?”

“I have my phone.” Aino Minako’s response was like a whip cracking. “The wonders of modern technology, Rei. You’d be amazed what _calling ahead_ can earn you in my diary.”

“Forgive my intrusion,” Came the response in formal Japanese said so sarcastically Michiru was sure the assistant sitting by the door winced. “I need to get back to the airport. Enjoy England, Mina. Think about what I said.” Mars crossed the space between herself and Venus in three quick strides and took the woman’s hand briefly, before turning and leaving once again.

“Goodbye Rei,” Aino Minako whispered quietly. She sounded so small in that moment. So lost.

The elevator dinged, and Mars was gone.

Michiru inspected her fingernails before getting slowly to her feet. Aino Minako looked crestfallen, standing in the doorway of her penthouse looking for all the world like she wanted to follow her friend out of the hotel and back to the airport.

“You must be Michiru Kaiou,” she said in English. “I’m really sorry you had to witness that.”

“I suppose in this moment I could pretend I didn’t speak Japanese,” Michiru answered in Japanese. “To give you some semblance of privacy.” She smoothed her skirt and tilted her head to one side. “You should go after her.”

Minako shook her head. “It’s no use. She’s like talking to a brick wall sometimes. I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“It’s no skin off my back,” Michiru answered, borrowing one of Haruka’s expressions. She held out her hand. “I'm Michiru Kaiou, we've spoken on the phone.” 

Aino Minako smiled and warmth erupted across her features. She took Michiru’s hand and shook it firmly. “I’m glad you agreed to meet me without our er… handlers present,” she explained in English. “I’d prefer it if we spoke English while I’m here, Ms. Kaiou. I’d like all the practice I can get if I’m to be working here for a few months.”

“I can do that,” Michiru answered.

“Well, good.” Minako turned to the assistant, who was staring steadfastly at the floor. “I think our office is just downstairs, if you’d like to wait there,” she said quietly. “Tell him and Kaiou-san’s manager that we’re in our meeting and will be down when it’s completed.”

Yamada Kazoko practically flees toward the elevators and Aino Minako stands in the doorway of her penthouse and smiles her small, private smile at Michiru. “Well, Ms. Kaoiu, do you want to come with me?”

Michiru nodded and bent to collect her violin case and her purse. She followed Minako into the penhouse. The first room was a large and airy office. It was impersonal in its décor. Minako had not been there long enough to make the space her own. There were a few forgettable pieces of art on the wall and someone had put up the gold and platinum European editions of Minako’s early work. At the array of windows dominating the far end of the space, a desk was covered in a few more personal effects. Some sheet music and a laptop, as well as a few photos in aged black frames showing Minako with individuals Michiru didn’t recognize. Michiru wondered how she could work in such a place, for her own workspace at home was an absolute mess of memories and little bits of inspiration. This place was too sterile for creativity.

“So, Ms. Kaiou, without our managers here, we can actually have a conversation.”  Aino Minako's smile was bewitching, as though she was laughing at a private joke. Michiru wondered if she was that transparent, if Aino Minako could look straight through her into the core of Neptune’s being and suss out her true self. Maybe their souls, warriors and protectors alike, called out to each other. Michiru didn’t know. All she knew was the smile made her on edge, and the hint of amusement in her voice only furthered the feeling. “I trust that’s alright with you?”

“I can’t speak to the contract,” Michiru answered honestly. “I wasn’t really involved – let my manager and solicitor handle most of the negotiations. I’m no good at legal matters.”

“Neither am I.” Minako laughed then, light and airy. “Well, I am, but no one lets me do anything because they’re all afraid I’ll break.”

“Because of your illness?”

“Ah. You know about that.”

“It’s on your Wikipedia page.” Michiru answered honestly. “I do my homework. I wasn’t sure what to expect from you because your music isn’t really the sort I work with regularly.”

“I heard you worked with Kelé.” Minako answered. “He’s brilliant. Shame about his mum and the stabbing.”

Kelé, the rapper who’d gotten her started in her career in collaborations, had called her and told her of his mother’s accident not long after it had happened. Knife crime was on the rise in his South London neighborhood, and he’d felt so powerless to stop it.  He’d wanted to ask if she’d do a charity concert to benefit building youth centers to cut down on such acts since the current youth services were not cutting down on crime. Michiru had agreed in a heartbeat. It’d been a fun concert, if incredibly sad.

“Such a shame.” Michiru agreed.

“I’m interested in collaborating with you as the pieces I want to do on this next album don’t really lend themselves to my current repertoire of instruments.” Minako moved behind the desk and began to shuffle through some papers. “I can write some arrangements, but my skill mostly lies in lyrics. I’m rubbish with a violin.” She held up a large folder with numerous sticky notes and scraps of paper sticking out of it. “I do write for piano from time to time, so these are mostly written for piano. I thought that we could adapt them...”

Michiru leaned forwards as the folder fell open and the younger woman began to page through the scraps with bits of music and lyrics scribbled all over them.  This was far more like her own work space; essentially vomit in the form of inspiration.  She could see little bits of some of the songs by Minako that she herself knows, as well as many that she's never seen before. 

“There are some of the pieces that I remember- -- the ones I’ve put together. Writing’s a bit of a manic experience for me. I tend to zone out and come out of it hours later with words on a page.”  Minako muttered almost to herself as she searched.  She laughed triumphantly and held up a small bundle of actual sheet music. “I've never written something like this before, so I could be completely off-base on the timing...”  She offered the papers to Michiru.

Michiru took them and hummed a few bars of the melody, her mind pulling back to Haruka and the past – to Uranus and the great balls Michiru had attended there. “The tune is nice,” she said, mostly to herself.  She scanned the page and noted the mess of sticky notes attached with chord progressions and scraps of lyrics yet to be fully realized into song. Even in their incomplete state, Michiru recognized them.

“These are love songs.”  She said quietly. Venusian if she remembered correctly, and some of the most passionate that existed; Michiru wondered just who’s heart this girl was trying to win.

Aino Minako looked taken aback.  “Well, I guess you could call them that.  They're more dances than anything else...”  Her eyes were wide, as though she wasn't expecting Michiru to see right through her. “I wanted to do something different than bubblegum pop for a change.

Michiru smiled and set the papers down on the desk in front of them.  “I would be more than happy to help you adapt these,” she said.  “This should be a good project.”

 

End Part One


	5. The Inner Guard - 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we've reached the present day. I'm trying to present a version of the inner senshi that progresses beyond what we've seen them do in PGSM, or hell, even in the anime or manga. I want to show the lives these young women have created for each other under the assumption that the past is just that - the past - this isn't so much an interregnum as it is a stepping stone. 
> 
> This second is six parts, and will be told through the perspectives of the inner guard and Usagi. 
> 
> A note -- The Special Act implied pretty heavily that Usagi was pregnant, but I had to have that... not happen for the sake of this story. Think of the more somber nature of Usagi in this as a testament to that ordeal and the trauma that comes with loss, which is, in a way, the conceit of Princess Sailor Moon's character.

Part Two – The Inner Guard

_Tokyo, Summer, Present Day_

The day was dragging. The Diet member she was meant to be interviewing was dealing with the delicate balance of power between those of the New Komeito and Jiyou Minshutou, especially after the LDP started to lose seats in the Diet, and therefore was delayed. She fiddled with her phone and slumped back against the stiff bench where a polite, if very unfriendly, secretary had seen her to nearly three hours before.

Her phone pinged. Tsukino Usagi looked down and pressed her thumb to the center button to unlock the phone. She had a new text, from Mamoru.

_Am just leaving now, are you going to be home for dinner?_

Usagi sighed heavily and glanced her watch. It was already nearly six thirty and she didn’t foresee, even if this conversation was held _right now_ , her story getting filed before nine. And that was if Shinzo approved it on the first draft. Which he made a habit of not doing, just for Usagi. He said it built character. Usagi thought he was many things, but chose not to say anything, as she liked her job and wanted to keep it.

_Probably not_ , she texted back.

Glancing up at the secretary, who was deeply absorbed in some paperwork, Usagi decided it was reasonable to risk a phone call. This meeting was meant to be over at three thirty, after all. It was reasonable to call one’s husband to make her apologies for missing dinner. For all this secretary her tardy employer knew, she had several children and was choosing to remain in the workforce despite the intense societal pressure to take time off to be a mother.

_If only it were true,_ Usagi thought bitterly. She’d been pregnant at twenty-two, but the child was lost before it was even a child – just a smear of blood in a period too heavy to be anything else.  Usagi had cried for weeks. No one could console her, for that was meant to be the beginning of it – the beginning of the return of her birthright. She never spoke of her desire to see it through, but a second child had not come, once she’d allowed Mamoru to touch her once more.

That was six years ago now.

Her phone pressed Mamoru’s contact information and navigated to his number. The ringing tone pulsed in Usagi’s ear.

“Is everything okay?”

“Kitagawa is running late,” Usagi explained. She glanced at her watch again. Six thirty three. “I’m worried I won’t get the copy in on time for the regional edition.”

“What do you need to ask him about, again?” Mamoru didn’t much care for the politics that Usagi found herself drawn to as she grew older and completed university. Usagi had started school thinking she wanted to go into public relations, knowing that being able to effectively communicate would serve her well in the future, but had been drawn to the journalistic side of things. She _got_ how the Diet worked, and how power was often so hard to fully articulate in Japanese politics.  She got it and she thrived in the setting of it. “You mentioned something this morning about the coalition being in jeopardy because of the election?”

“I don’t think it’s in jeopardy,” Usagi answered truthfully. “I just think there needs to be more transparency and accountability regarding what is being said behind closed door meetings.” She kept her voice low in order to not attract the secretary’s attention.  “How was work?”

“The rotation is long, and I’m not the best with the elderly,” Mamoru confessed. “They smell.” In her mind’s eye, Usagi could see his nose wrinkle. She loved him so much.

“Don’t say things like that!” Usagi laughed. “Is rude.”

“So is denying your husband the chance to see your beautiful face at dinner, Usagi,” Mamoru answered, his tone entirely earnest. A surge of warmth gripped Usagi. She knew she was blushing at her husband’s words – at her prince’s words.

“Such language,” she murmured. Her voice pitched low, quiet. “One might think you a man in love, Chiba Mamoru.”

“Well,” he sounded flustered. “Right. Erm – yes. So you’ll be home after deadline?”

“Yes, Mamo-chan,” she sighed. “I’m really sorry.”

“It’s nothing,” Mamoru answered. “I know what your job expects of you and I’m proud of you. Oh – and a package arrived for you today – from Amazon UK.”

“I’m proud of you too, even if you’re mean to the old people.” Usagi answered, though her heart beat excitedly at the idea of the package. She’d been expecting it for two weeks now – it had been held up at customs and she’d had to pay nearly 4000 yen to get it released in import taxes. “It’s Minako’s—”

“Oh?”

“Well, I suppose I can tell you later.” Kitagawa had emerged from his office. He was shorter than Usagi expected in person, but he had a kind face. “I’ll be home later.” She said quickly and hung up.

Kitagawa was taking her in, his expression thoughtful. She bowed low, offered her business card, and explained what she wanted to talk to the man about. At the mention of transparency, his face became more closed, but he allowed her into his office without question.  Usagi took out her notepad, and set her phone to record, and began to work.

 

x

 

Hours later, Usagi returned home. Her feet were aching and her brain was completely spent on discussions of the Diet and who was potentially going to take the place of the minister she’d spoken to in the next election. She didn’t particularly want to talk to anyone, walking into the apartment she shared with Mamoru with her headphones still on and the playlist she’d curated while still at university for when she wanted to feel calm playing softly in her ears.

She’d needed it then, in the terrible depression which followed her failure to do the one thing she was put on this earth to do: continue the line, allow hope for the future. Usagi’s consciousness had been its most frayed then, it’s most at war with itself over the outcome of what Usagi’s traitor body had found fit to do with the heiress of the kingdoms of Earth and Moon together. _What would Endymion think_? Her mind kept demanding in those dark times, _knowing you care so little for our love to reject the one thing which would secure our legacy_?

Her doctors said she’d be alright, that she could have another child. These things happened sometimes. The body wasn’t ready, or the mind wasn’t. It wasn’t any fault of the mother or father, because biologically, sometimes the body just knew and rejected the pregnancy. The tests they’d done on what remained had said as much. It was a small comfort, but one Usagi welcomed at the time. Her low point had been two years ago, well removed from the incident, but struck when some of her school friends had started families of their own. She was to have been the first, the leader, now she was just a failure with a secret.

She and Mamoru had told only Rei, because Rei always knew these things and had appeared one day asking if everything was already. It meant Minako probably knew, but she’d never said a word and for that, Usagi was ever-grateful.

“Your package is on the table!” Mamoru called from the kitchen. His face, warm and soft in a way he only seemed to show Usagi, appeared around the corner. “I’m heating you up some dinner.”

Usagi bent to remove her shoes. “Thanks,” she said. Her jacket and headphones came next, tucked into her pocket and then hung his in the doorway. Usagi paused for a moment, knowing she should mention she was having the thoughts to him again, but not wanting him to feel the shame of them or how she struggled to control them at times.

The package was a welcome distraction. For the first time in her life, Usagi did not wait for the physical domestic release of Aino Minako’s latest album. It was delayed in Japan as there was talk of including a second, bonus disk of a live recording of Minako’s homecoming concert, slated for the end of next month. While Usagi and the rest of the world had already listened to the album, for it had had an international online release nearly two months ago now, Usagi was practically vibrating with excitement to hold the physical fruit of Minako’s latest project in her hands. 

“What’s it look like?” Mamoru called from the kitchen. The microwave beeped. “After what you paid in the customs fee, I hope it’s worth it.”

“Shut up, Mamoru,” Usagi shot back, laughing as she spoke. “I wanted it now, not in three months. Though I’ll probably get that one too. I like supporting my friends.”

The CD was wrapped in plastic and had several stickers in English on it. Usagi’s skill with the language had ever been good, but she knew enough about popular culture to know it proclaimed the song ‘Sand’ to be an international number one hit, and to include collaborations with an internationally renowned violinist

“Does being a number one fan have anything to do with it?” Mamoru asked. He swept into the room and pressed a kiss to her temple, handing her a bowl of rice with an egg and some freshly cut fish on top – Mamoru’s go-to lazy cooking meal. Usagi took it gratefully and smiled at him. “Ah, I was wondering if they’d mention the violinist in the liner notes.”

Usagi started to eat and Mamoru pulled the plastic off the CD to open it up and extract the liner notes. The CD itself was the usual mirrored surface of Minako’s CDs. Each of her CDs had a theme, and that theme was usually reflected on the physical surface of the CD in the form of a pattern. The first two albums had been variations of lace, the third a paisley. Recently Minako was experimenting with geometric shapes.

This one was different. Usagi stared down at it for a long time, taking in the loops and whirls of the writing – and she knew it to be writing almost immediately – encircling the CD. “This isn’t…” Usagi started. She set her bowl down and trailed her finger around the edge of the CD. “Minako’s always been – but this…”

Mamoru set the liner notes down and peered at the CD. “It just looks like a cool design, Usagi.”

Shaking her head, Usagi traced her finger along the edge of the CD and spoke the language she read there. “This is a collection of love poems, written by my hand during the interregnum period between Queen Serenity XIV and Queen Serenity XV, in praise of Venus, my love, and for those who have lived and died in the moon’s pale light.” Usagi’s raised her hand to cover her mouth. A sick, twisting fear gripped her – the fear of the future and a stark knowledge of the past.

“What did you just say?” Mamoru asked.

Usagi stared at him for a moment before sagging against him and reaching for her bowl once more. “I’m happy,” she said. She didn’t want to answer him because answering him would be confirmation of something she didn’t think either of them were ready to admit out loud. “That Minako still writes her truth.”

Mamoru gave her a strange, long look and did not say anything for a while. He wrapped his arm around Usagi’s shoulder and let her lean into him. “Speaking of writing your truth,” he said. “How did the article go?”

“Alright,” Usagi answered. “I’m still not used to this writing beat and I think my editor knows it. Having Diet members give me the time of day is so new to me.”

He hummed his agreement. “I know you said it was a big step up, but I think it’s a good move, career wise.”

“Anything is better than hanging out with old people all day, huh” Usagi laughed.

He bent down and kissed her cheek. “You have no idea how much they smell. And how often they ask me if I’m married. Especially the grannies. It’s…” he shivered. “I feel like I’m on display.”

“I promise I won’t let the creepy old ladies get you.” Usagi put on her most resolute face possible and raised in her hand in the air. “I swear it on…” her eyes flicked down at her half-eaten bowl of rice. “This very delicious dinner.”

“I’m so glad food means more to you than me.”

“Idiot.”

 

x

 

**Senshi-Tatchi** ♕

_Me_ 🐰 🌙

_I have Minako’s new CD. Crown tomorrow night?_

_Hino Rei_ 🔥☀️

_I have work at the shrine._

_Also we’ve all already heard it._  
  


_Mizuno Ami_ 👓 ❄️

_We haven’t been to the Crown in ages._

_I’d love to go. I have the night off._

_Me_ 🐰 🌙

_Rei you are so rude._

_Do you hate fun?_

_Hino Rei_ 🔥☀️

_I take my commitments very seriously._

_Kino Makoto_ 🍃👩🍳

_Your commitment to being no fun._

_Usagi, I have the early shift tomorrow so I can go._

_Me_ 🐰 🌙

_Awesome! I’m so excited!!_ _💃_  
_do we want to get dinner first?_

x

The Crown emptied out quickly. They were busy adults after all – there was so much they had to do these days it was amazing that they’d managed to gather at all. Mamoru had been put on a midnight rotation for the next week, so he was the first to disappear – Ami soon after. Both of them worked more hours than Usagi, but were apologetic about leaving. Makoto lingered, regaling Usagi with stories of the kitchen where her catering business had made its mark on the local wedding community. With summer just starting it was a miracle that Makoto had a free evening, but apparently there was a lull due to an upcoming bank holiday which had prioritized certain weekend days over the week leading up to them. It meant Makoto was working days, prepping and copping and preparing as much as she could before the final flurry of activity over the weekend.  Soon though, she too had to leave, wandering upstairs to help Matoki close up the Crown.

Usagi drifted out onto the street and wandered for a little while, finding herself in a park before long and sitting on a set of swings. They’d made plans to have a dinner early the next week – when they were sure Rei was free and not conveniently busy avoiding them. She’d agreed in text, at least, which was a step up for Rei.

_"_ Pinning her down is like photographing rain,” Ami had commented after confirming the plans in a few texts. “I know she’s busy – and that working in her field is a nightmare on the psyche, but I wish she’d be more open about what’s going on for her. It isn’t good to lock it all inside.”

Makoto hummed her agreement. “I’m surprised she’s stayed in Japan long enough to have duties at the shrine again.”

“Her organization does great work,” Usagi agreed. “They’re still in places where most of the international aid groups have left. It’s why Rei went to Indonesia last month. They’re still working to rebuild schools and infrastructure after the tsunami.”

“When did she tell you that?” Makoto eyed Usagi suspiciously. “I can’t get her to even text me back these days she’s so busy.”

Usagi flushed. “I er… maybe wrote it up for the paper.”

“Usagi! Did you interview Rei?” The glee in Ami’s voice was palpable. “I bet she was the worst interview you’ve ever done.”

“No, it was her boss, but I managed to extract a lot of intel about our mysterious Rei.” Usagi lowered her voice conspiratorially. “And I know that they’re drafting their report on this mission and won’t be out in the field for at least six months.” Ami and Makoto glanced at each other. “This means Rei is home for six months.” Usagi finished, clapping her hands together. “We should have a party.”

The dinner plans had come about after that. Usagi charged with making inquires with Minako and ensuring Mamoru could also attend.  The swing above her creaked. Usagi pushed herself back into a rocking position and pulled out her cell phone and flipped through her contacts until she found the correct number. Rei had programmed it into her phone three phones ago now, under ‘ _Venus_ ’ when things had been so bad and no one knew who Venus was. Usagi had left it that way as a measure of privacy for Minako. Because no one who happened upon Usagi’s phone needed an international idol’s personal phone number. 

She hit the 'send' button after a moment's consideration and waited as the call connected.  Minako was in Japan somewhere, she knew, and it wasn’t all that late just yet. She’d come over earlier in the week to start rehearsals and prep to kick off her world tour. It was nice, for once, to not have to consider the time when calling Minako. Usagi smiled, thinking of the text she’d sent earlier in the day.

_You’ll never guess what we’re going to listen to a physical copy of today._

_Oh? Surprise me._

_A bird told me you were having a war with customs._

_Rei is so nosy. It’s like she knows everyone’s business just to be an ass about things._

_It is how she is._

_I can’t believe you’re having a listening party without me!_

_Well, you’re welcome to come. Crown, tonight._

_I have rehearsal, I can’t. I’m sorry.  Think of me?_

_Fondly. Always._

“Hello,” A tired-sounding voice answered in English.  Usagi swallowed, panic gripping her. She wasn’t prepared to answer in English. She pulled her phone away from her ear and checked to ensure she’d dialled the correct number. She hated the uncertainty, it was something she was working on improving professionally, but English was not something she was accustomed to. The voice on the phone shifted into Japanese. “Sorry, hello?”

“Minako?”

“Usagi?” Something shuffled on the other end of the line, like someone sitting up and drawing blankets back. “Sorry, they’re running me so ragged I feel asleep as soon as they let me go. Forgive me. I had wondered if you’d call tonight.”

Usagi laughed. Minako’s intensity had calmed down since they’d all come back, but she still was somewhat distant. Being famous did that, Usagi had learned during her career. People with known names and faces tended to keep themselves protected by remaining distant. The friendship they’d formed with Minako since she’d come back was still like that. Usagi was certain Rei was the only one of them who truly knew Minako the way Usagi knew the rest of her friends. It never bothered her though, for Minako was there when she needed to be. She never missed birthdays or holidays, even if it was only by FaceTiming into conversations, she was still there, still a presence.  It was that presence Usagi wanted now.

“Well, here I am,” The childish want to shriek at the fact she was speaking to her favourite artist since they were both fourteen still filled Usagi in these moments before their conversations truly started. “I missed you, Minako. It’s been a long time.”

“I’m sorry I’ve been so busy.” Minako sighed. “It has been a long time. This tour is going to be a nightmare if we don’t set the tone right from the beginning.”

“Are you worried about that? You’re touring with someone, which you never do.” The question slipped out almost unbidden. It was too familiar and made assumptions about Minako that Usagi didn’t like to do. She was used to treading carefully with Minako and fame, because more than anything she wanted Minako to feel normal around her. To pry into that famous life was never Usagi’s intention. She supposed it was her job getting to her personal interactions.

“My, Usagi, is this an interview?” There was a gentle, teasing tone in Minako’s voice.

“No!” Usagi laughed. “I was genuinely curious. I know you told me about Ms. Kaiou and your tour, but she’s a classical artist, is touring with you really what she wants?”

“She seemed pretty interested in coming to Japan,” Minako hummed. “Which is strange as she and her partner are both established in London.”

“She’s married?”

“No, just seeing someone. A cyclist.” Minako giggle. “You’re the only married woman in my life, Usagi. Who knows when the rest of us will pull the trigger?”

“Next you’re going to be lamenting how you’re cursed to never have romance in your life because of some sin you committed as a child,” Usagi raised a sceptical eyebrow, even though Minako could not see her. It was an old joke, one from back when Minako was still moonlighting as Sailor V, an incomplete mission and desperate to find the ginzouishou. She’d been cursed by some being she’d met, cursed to be the avatar of love and never find it.

Funny how those things worked out.

“Hardly. There are … people in my life.”

Usagi’s eyes grew wide. Was this when things would be admitted, finally? In her mind she could hear the hearts of Japan, and really, the rest of the world, breaking. Aino Minako was off the market. “Really?”

“Forget I said anything,” Minako said quickly.

They lapsed into silence then, Usagi desperately wanting to ask but not wanting to pry. She was pretty sure she knew what was happening, unfolding right before her eyes as it had been for years now. They were getting a second chance at things now.

Usagi rocked herself back and forth on the swing, toe digging into the hard dirt below. Minako’s breathing was a steady sound in her ear. They did this sometimes, saying nothing. Minako’s presence was reassuring for Usagi – a carryover from another time, they both knew. Venus was Serneity’s guard more often than she was not, not that Usagi remembered any of that at all.

“Hey, Minako…”

“Mn?”

“These are… old songs, aren’t they?” The tracks on the album unsteadied Usagi. She hadn’t mentioned it to Mamoru or to any of the others, but they – like the words on the CD itself – set Usagi’s teeth on edge. _Interregnum…_ “They’re set to different music, but they’re old songs.”

Minako sighed, a hum in Usagi’s ear. “I suppose they are. I’ve been thinking a lot about that time lately. Did you like them? I was going to send you a copy, but my manager caught me as I was putting it in the mail and took it away.”

Usagi cradled the phone to her ear, “Yes, very much, Minako-chan.” It felt like a betrayal to admit it, even if it was the truth. Usagi didn’t think Minako should linger so much in the past – it wasn’t healthy. “But I miss your old music. It was always so happy. These are – they’re beautiful – but haunting. Like I’ve been drawn into someone’s nightmare and made to feel the death of love.”

“I wanted to try something different,” Minako confessed. “Though I did not mean to make you feel so sad, Usagi. That was never my intention.”

“Your music always brings back memories for me.”

Minako's tone turned sharp, “Good memories or bad ones?”  There was a bit of guilt in her voice.

“Whose nightmare is it, Minako? Who made you sing these songs?”

“Who is asking?” Minako’s tone did not waver.

“Does it matter?” Usagi’s tone turned cold. “I love it when you sing, Minako, I love it when you let your voice be heard in the world and I love the memories your voice brings back to me – but these are songs… of…”

“They are from Venus, Princess.”

“Don't call me that name, Minako.” Usagi frowned. “We’re not them anymore.”

“Aren’t we?” Minako asked. Usagi wished she didn’t sound so desperate and so worried.

“That's all in the past now.”  Usagi said quietly. What Minako had written on the CD haunted her. The belief she had that this was not the end – that there would be more fighting to come – for how could she as heir to a kingdom long dead, assume any throne? Minako had a future now, she had a career. And she was still trapped in this hollow place where neither thing existed. It could stay in the past, where it had hope of reality, where the burden of what it might mean and could become did not feel as though it were an albatross strung up around her neck. “We should leave it there.”

“You know I can’t.”

“Please,” The name she spoke was as curt as any order. Usagi swallowed. Guilt ate at her almost immediately. “I’m sorry. I know this is a huge achievement for you. There’s talk of awards already. I just – I want you to have a future, Minako.”

She wanted nothing to do with the fact that all of her friends, even now, she guessed, would lay down their lives without a second thought for her.  She didn't like being that important or that powerful.  She was just Usagi, just a normal woman with a job and a husband.  She didn’t need to be a princess.

“Have you heard from the others?”  Minako asked, changing the subject. Usagi guessed she felt she couldn’t answer her other demand without being disloyal or disobedience. She didn’t care, Minako could believe what she wanted about the past. She was grateful for the change, the lighter conversation made Usagi feel like they were once again on solid ground.

“Mn. They were all here with me earlier, well, except for Rei, but Rei never comes to these things any more...”  Usagi trailed off, knowing that out of their entire circle of friends, Rei was the one Minako cared for the most.  “We're getting together next week for dinner at my house, Mamoru's got something going on, it’ll just be a girl's night.  You're more than welcome to come if you're free.”

“I'll check my schedule, Usagi, but it sounds like something I wouldn't miss for the world.” 


End file.
